Limeadestand Works & Creative Liberation Lab

Practical and educational stuff on branding, public relations, entrepreneurship, and design.

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This blog has moved in-house!

We’re now at https://limeadestandworks.com/labnotes/

See you there!

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Review: WordGrinder, ultimate productivity for writers

(This is an unsolicited review based on my user experience.)

These days, computer software sometimes has too many features. To make it worse, many office software has migrated to the cloud, making it slow at times. 

If you’re like me, when you are in the groove of writing, the last thing you want is to be bothered by too many buttons and unnecessary visual distractions.

While there have been other open-source programs such as FocusWriter, nothing beats the simple elegance, speed, and functionality of WordGrinder.

Unlike FocusWriter, Abiword, LibreOffice, and others, WordGrinder takes the old-fashioned typing back to the time when Smith-Corona used to sell stand-alone wordprocessing machines at the RadioShack or Sears. When I was a college student back in the 1990s, a “real” computer was too expensive and something I only had an access to at the computer lab, I bought one of those glorified electronic typewriter with a small black-and-white LCD screen and a 3.5″ floppy disk drive so I could do my homework.

WordGrinder’s interface reminds me of those undergrad days.

For those who are older than I am, WordGrinder may have the look and feel of WordPerfect running on the good old MS-DOS.

It’s simple, functions are keystroke-activated, and there are no bells and whistles -- but it’s fast even on a very old computer.

The good:

Extremely fast on any computer

Efficient, zero-waste user interface eliminates visual distractions

Because terminal windows can be fairly small on your screen, it will be great if you are writing academic papers and need to go back and forth between reading the online articles and writing the paper

Basic functions you expect from a word processor is here, including italic, bold text, underline, as well as various formatting options such as blockquotes

Word counts are always displayed at the bottom of the screen

It supports Unicode, therefore, you can type non-Latin characters such as Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

Because it is independent of the graphic user interface, it can be deployed even on a shared server on which multiple users log in via SSH or Telnet.

The not-so-good:

The files are saved in the WordGrinder native format (.wg). While you can easily export the files to Open Document (.odt), HTML, and Markdown (.md) formats, it seems like it’s an extra step when no other word processing and desktop publishing programs recognize .wg files.

There is no print function. This means that you will have to export your file to ODT, and open it with LibreOffice and print it or convert it to PDF there.

Spellcheck is not available. Maybe the future versions could integrate aspell and aiksaurus. 

No right-to-left or top-to-bottom writing support (i.e., Arabic, Hebrew, traditional Mongolian, Manchu, traditional CJK, etc.)

How to download and install:

Popular Debian-based Linux distributions (including Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Peppermint OS): Package “wordgrinder” is included in the repository. Find it on Synaptic Package Manager, or simply open a terminal (alt-ctrl-T) and type “sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wordgrinder”. Please note that the repository may not have the latest version (0.6.0 is on the Ubuntu repository, whereas 0.7.0 is the latest)

Other Linux and Unix: Download a tarball and compile it yourself.

MacOS: While there is no Mac version, you may be able to compile the Unix version and run it (advanced geek skills required)

Microsoft Windows: Download the .exe file and open it.

Android: There is no Android app. You may, however, be able to download the Termux app, and compile the tarball. Do this at your own risk (advanced geek skills required), as Termux is slightly different from standard Linux due to security restrictions and architectural differences.

[limeadestandworks]

Creative Liberation Lab program update (Dec. 31, 2017)!

Happy holidays and I wish you a happy new year.

I’d like to take this moment to briefly update you on the present status of the Creative Liberation Lab educational program for new micro-entrepreneurs.

Several months ago, I announced that the winter term will commence in January. After some consideration, I am making the seven-week program no longer tied to a specific calendar; instead, you will be able to start it anytime without having to wait for the next registration period.

Accordingly, I am redesigning this course in such a way that it could accommodate learners all year long.

The newly redesigned program should be available in the next several weeks.

Thank you for your patience and I look forward to seeing you in the program.

- Willow.

[limeadestandworks]

The least you need to know about customer reviews

We live in a time when customer reviews can make or break any business. Negative incidents can easily snowball into a viral social media phenomenon, creating a major public relations nightmare, however minor the original incidents might have been. The Internet can be a cruel place where faceless and nameless users can literally ruin a business as prosecutors, judges, jury, and executioners.

On the flip side of it, every business loves positive reviews on Yelp, Google Maps, Facebook, TripAdvisor, and other review sites.

It is therefore very tempting for a business owner to solicit reviews from customers. But you must be aware of what is permitted and what is not.

Consumer reviews, including social media and blog posts, are now regulated by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as potential advertisements.

In order to distinguish a genuine product or service review by a bona fide consumer from advertisements disguised as “reviews,” the FTC has promulgated regulations that require any review or endorsement that is not strictly unsolicited to be clearly disclosed as a paid advertisement.

Beyond legality, this is also an ethical issue. To this day, there are shady business owners who pay people to post fake reviews online; it is illegal and more importantly unethical.

These are the rules of the thumb:

1. You are not allowed to offer free product or service in exchange for a positive review. While it’s legal to ask customers to rate or review your business on Yelp or other sites, you cannot dictate customers what to write, and you cannot offer a favorable treatment for those who post a positive review.

2. You cannot approach a person to come review, recommend, or endorse your business in exchange for free or discounted service or goods. That is considered a paid advertisement according to the FTC, and such “reviews” must be clearly disclosed as such. Genuinely legitimate reviews must come from a normal customer experience, not a staged customer experience. This also includes any “recommendations,” “reviews,” or “endorsements” by celebrities and well-known bloggers, podcasters, or YouTubers.

3. You cannot ask customers to edit or delete negative reviews or pay them to do so.

4. You cannot intimidate or deny future service to customers who left a negative review or rating.

5. Respond to negative reviews appropriately, but don’t be defensive (point-by-point rebuttals can come across as being defensive). Have a good sense of humor. Both Yelp and Facebook allow you to reply to customer reviews. If it starts to look like a flame war, take the discussions off the public view and reach out to the customers directly.

6. You cannot ask your employees, friends, family members, business associates, or any other insiders for a “review.”

If you encounter any customer reviews that are clearly libelous or works of Internet trolls who are not actual customers, you can usually flag such posts and report them as abuses. However, pursuing a libel lawsuit is costly and is not recommended.

Remember: only unsolicited reviews from normal paying customers are legitimate reviews.

Photo credit: Pixabay/Public Domain Pictures, cc0 public domain.

[limeadestandworks]

Limeadestand Works/Creative Liberation Lab news for December 2017!

Hi everyone!

I’ve been quiet online and I have not updated this blog as often as I really should be.

Here is what’s happening:

1. The blog has moved! Now it’s on Tumblr, instead of Medium. While I love what Medium has to offer in terms of content curation and user interface, it is also inflexible when it comes to layout and themes. If you have been subscribing to this blog using RSS, don’t worry--I have updated the Feedburner configuration so it will now automatically read articles from here.

2. The podcast has been suspended for now. I have decided to suspend this podcast and restart it under a new name and format in the near future.   Producing a 30-minute-ish podcast took me a full week of conception, research, and writing, plus 5 to 6 hours of recording and post-recording production. I cannot simply continue this as the podcast is only a small part of Limeadestand Works/Creative Liberation Lab's products -- and a free one at that. I have a very hard time keep talking for more than 10 minutes at a time, due to a minor speech impediment.  In the end, the recorded raw audio files had to be heavily edited and the end product sounded horrible. The contents of my first and second podcast episodes sounded like a one-sided criticism of others in the industry mixed in with random incoherent rants. They did not provide value to my listeners. It was mostly me reading off a pre-written script, which wasn't really a great podcast best practice. This is what a new podcast will look like: (1) Each episode will be short but releases will be more frequent. (2) I will try to make it more conversational, with more extemporaneous elements. (3) Each episode will be bite-sized yet practical and educational. (4) A new name.  

3. Creative Liberation Lab program will be resuming in January 2018!

I hope you’ve been enjoying the gorgeous first week of December.

Happy holidays,

xo Willow

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A statement from Limeadestand Works regarding promotion of inappropriate event

Since its founding last year, Limeadestand Works sought to express its commitment to social responsibilities and justice. As a social enterprise that evolved from faith-based political activism, this has been an important part of how Limeadestand Works conducts its activities.

It is in this spirit that I am making this formal apology, which is not something I do lightly.

This past September, one of my clients has held an event called “The Red Tent Convergence Women’s Festival of the Pacific Northwest.” The said client has been a close friend of mine for the past six years and we worked closely when she, together with another friend of hers, organized a women’s activist group. One of the best known features of that activist group was public displays of a large “red tent,” initially in response to the overwhelmingly male-centric and male-dominated narratives within the local activist scene (the group, in turn, was organized in response to the local Occupy Wall Street affiliate’s continuous failure to deal with a certain male activist who habitually committed sexual harassment and sexual assaults).

It was in this light that I suggested a “red tent” festival as a way to boost her new business endeavor, which was primarily targeted toward heterosexual, cisgendered, middle-class women who are contemplating a career change.

While my intention was benign, I failed to develop a prudent feminist analysis and anti-oppression analysis. To be honest, my level of consciousness and awareness on this issue has been very primitive and were informed largely by the white, middle-class mainstream narratives.

Several weeks in prior to this festival, I requested several members of the queer community and queer-positive feminist organizations to help promote the event. I was instead called out for my involvement in this event by a number of individuals. They offered me valuable criticisms and I accepted them with humility.

In particular, I failed to practice some critical thinking in this, and only saw the promotion of this event as means to an end. Although it touted “women’s empowerment,” the very customs of red tent, or menstrual huts, are predicated on a highly misogynist concept: that females who are having typical biological functions are somehow “unclean” and “dirty” — and therefore must be sequestered away from the rest of society.

As recently as only under a year ago, this practice in December 2016 led to a tragic death of a young woman in Nepal, where such a practice still persists despite it having become illegal in 2005.

It is worth noting that the so-called Red Tent Women’s Movement has been largely an initiative of European and North American women who never have experienced this sort of oppressive practices themselves.

By colonizing a practice such as this, and constructing a highly romanticized narrative around it does not make it any less bad. Indeed, Anita Diamant, the author of her fictitious fantasy account of a biblical figure Dinah, has been highly criticized by biblical scholars and historians.

While Diamant is entitled to an artistic license and her own creativity, she fails to address the underlying cultural context in which the menstrual hut originated: misogyny, patriarchy, exclusion of females from the mainstream of society to its periphery, and religious hatred of bodily functions especially as they relate to sexuality.

One cannot build a reconstructed replica of Auschwitz and call it “Jewish empowerment” because it ostensibly celebrates Jewish resistance or resilience of the human spirit.

One cannot build a gallows with nooses hanging from it and call it a “celebration of the African-American history,” either.

So it was very inappropriate for me to be even suggesting that this “red tent” motif would be a great way to “celebrate women’s community and creativity.”

Furthermore, as you may notice from simply looking at websites and pictures of various such Red Tent groups, many of these groups construct their decorations and costumes around so-called “Gypsy” (sometimes “goddess”) themes, or else, some kitschy pseudo-Middle Eastern/Central Asian/South Asian themes. The Roma people (often called the “Gypsies”) remains a marginalized ethnic group throughout Europe. And needless to say, in most of the Middle East and Asia, women are highly marginalized and are treated like second-class humans (or worse, mere chattels). In Saudi Arabia, women are forbidden from leaving their homes without male guardians. In India, public gang rapes and even witch hunts are still widespread under the shadows of the very goddess figures Westerners steal and appropriate. Appropriating their aesthetics in a highly romanticized manner (and very inaccurate manner) should not be something I should have been promoting.

For all this, I humbly accept valuable criticisms I have received, as well as personal responsibilities for promoting this event regardless of my intentions or lack of my awareness and consciousness.

This red tent festival was entirely my own idea at its inception and only took place because I suggested it. For that, I must take full responsibility. My client is not at fault.

As Limeadestand Works grows, I intend to more consciously incorporate anti-oppressive principles into all aspects of its business strategies and practices. This is a work that is always in progress, and I appreciate continued input and feedback in this regard.

(Originally published on Oct. 11, 2017.)

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How much should you charge for your service?

This article is a summary of the Woo Fighter’s Anti-Marketing School broadcast originally aired on Oct. 1, 2017. This program is distributed on Podomatic and YouTube.

You may be thinking about going independent, but wondering how much you should charge for your service.

Pricing for services is always challenging. It can often be a very subjective process. It’s often easier to set a price for tangible things since you know how much you spend to make something. But what would you do if what you offer is not material? For example, if you are a writer or a DJ? Or, if you are a babysitter or a house cleaner?

Many of you are dipping your toes into the entrepreneurship world after years of living and working as an employee. When you become an entrepreneur, you become your own boss and your own employee at the same time. Knowing how to price your labor as an independent business owner is therefore quite different a ballpark from what you’re used to.

To practice a socially just pricing, you must take four factors into your thinking:

First, is what you charge fair to your customers.

Second, is what you charge fair to yourself.

Third, is what you charge fair to other freelancers and business owners who offer similar services.

And, fourth, is it fair and just to the community at large.

By setting your price too low, you could do an injustice to your competitors as you drive down the going rate — much like big box stores such as Walmart drive independent shops out of business because of their low prices. By setting your price too low, you’re also doing a great injustice to yourself. Remember, you’re now the boss. Act like it with confidence. Claim your power.

And when you devalue your work, you’re doing a big injustice to yourself and allowing sleazy, cheapskate clients to exploit you and be unreasonable. When you sell yourself cheap, they will act like you’re cheap, too. So don’t sell yourself short.

Not only that, when you devalue your service, you’re depressing the going rate for your industry in your community, making other freelancers and business owners to earn less. Solidarity with your competitors is important.

Don’ts:

Uncritically accept what your clients offer to pay. Especially when you’re new, it’s tempting to take any work so you might feel like letting your client set the price. The human psychology is that most people will pay as little as they could get away with, even if they are not necessarily poor. And when something is perceived as “cheap,” they will take more and more of it, costing you more and more than you can recoup.

Offer sliding-scale rates and discounts. Many people also think giving discounts to new customers is a wonderful marketing idea. And quite a few folks think it’s socially just to offer a sliding scale pricing. I experimented with both, and here’s what I found: first when you give introductory discounts, it’ll be a lot harder to increase your price down the road. You may lose a few customers as soon as your introductory rate ends. Second, sliding-scale pricing is not as fair as it seems on the surface. When you offer a sliding scale, what you’re communicating is that the bottom end of the sliding scale is your actual price and you’re price gouging for everyone else. It will force you to become an arbiter of who is worthy of your “generosity” and, ultimately, it will either force you to act like a social worker or make your sliding-scale into another “pay-what-you-want” program (see above).

Blindly accept it when your client says something like “I can only pay you this much but you will get more work in the future, or you will get my referrals, or I will offer a work trade for this or that”. At the start, when you’re trying to build and grow your business these propositions can be extremely tempting. But in reality, almost all these promises will disadvantage you and your client will have an oversized negotiating leverage over you, making it very difficult in the future for you to assert your interests.

Do’s:

Imagine how much you’re worth in terms of an annual salary. Go ahead, be reasonable but think big. Have some confidence and self-respect here. Needless to say, this number should be more than enough to keep you alive and fed.

Estimate how much money it takes to start and run a business for a year. Even if you cut expenses, you will still have minimal business expenses such as registration of business names, Internet domain name fees, and basic business supplies (as well as any future investment in expanding your business, such as more ad buys or upgrading of equipment). These expenses should come from a separate fund on top of your “salary.” Usually, it is safe to estimate this portion to be twice your salary, so for example, if your annual salary is $20,000, think $40,000. This “bucket” of money should also be where all the business taxes, licensing fees, and insurance premiums would come out of. Even if you’re a sole proprietor, think of this “bucket” as the “company money.”

Don’t forget that not all your working hours are working with your customers (billable hours) and therefore not all your working hours are paid (non-billable hours). When you’re still building your business, it’s quite possible that 4 out of 5 hours (80 percent) are non-billable. When you’re doing well, this could shrink down to 1 out of 4 hours (25 percent). In any case, think of how much time you will be working on administrative tasks, product development, and your own promotion, and give yourself enough financial buffer. It’s important to remember that unlike a wage employee, your workload can fluctuate wildly and with it, your weekly or monthly income may vary depending on how many customers you have at any given time. Especially if the line of your business is seasonal, factor that into account.

A very modest, simple example of how this works:

Step 1: Let’s say my salary should be $7,000. I live very simply, so this is plentiful.

Step 2: $7,000 x 2 is $14,000. $7,000 + $14,000 = $21,000 (in other words, this is triple your salary in the Step 1).

Step 3: Let’s say I work 15 hours a week, 48 weeks a year. That makes it 720 hours in a year. $21,000 divided by 720 is $29 an hour; however, since I’m likely to be getting one billable hour for every four hours of non-billable work (think “the 80/20 rule”), I would multiply $29 by 5. [This ratio may vary depending on how many customers you already have, your location, or other factors. Some suggest the ratio of 25% non-billable hours for 75% billable hours; however, I see this as unrealistic for those who are just starting out and trying to build their customer base, so I suggest 80%/20% at least for the time being until you have a more or less constant flow of customer traffic.]

Step 4: My hourly rate for my clients should be $145.

One of the great resources I recommend is the Freelancers’ Union. Membership in the union is currently free and there are over 350,000 members. The Freelancers’ Union website has an extensive resources section where you can download a variety of forms you can use, as well.

Another resource I recommend is And.co. This website offers a free electronic billing service for freelancers (free means no contract, upfront costs, or monthly fee, but And.co takes 9 percent of invoice payments as a transaction fee).

Creative Liberation Lab (formerly Micro-Revolution Academy) is an affordable online learning center for aspiring entrepreneurs in the artist, crafter, and maker community. The Fall 2017 term (7-week-long) begins on Tuesday, October 24. You can enroll for $70 for the entire term on a basic learning plan, and for those who are more budget-conscious, we have a limited basic learning plan for $35.

Note: The podcast referenced in this article is currently suspended.

(Originally published on Oct. 2, 2017.)

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Here’s all what you need to know how to put your websites on search engines

When you’re trying to dip your toes into the business world, one of the first things people tell you is to set up a website and “do an SEO.”

SEO means “search engine optimization.” In other words, write and design your websites so that people will find them easily. Specifically, that means try to put your website within top 3 to 5 of a relevant search result (in professional jargon, it’s called “SERP” or search engine results page). This is because most people don’t look past the fifth result on a SERP.

There are lots of complicated and often self-contradictory information out there, often propagated by self-appointed digital marketing experts who are primarily there to sell their services.

They make it sound way more difficult than SEO really is. Sure, SEO can be an elaborate and complex task that requires a constant analysis and attention — if you are a big business or you have lots of competitors. But for a small business that is largely local, there are only 10 things you have to keep in mind.

1. Domain name and URL “slug.”

If you have your own domain name, don’t change it often. Search engines look at “domain name history” and give more weight on domain names that have been around for years, over a brand new domain name that just popped up. When you register a domain name, ideally, it should be relevant to your business name (e.g. “abccompany.com”) or what your business does or makes (“catnippillows.us”).

The file names and blog posts URL should reflect the contents, not random numbers or something irrelevant. For example, certain types of pages should have a predictable file name, such as about.html, faq.html, and contact-us.html.

If you have multiple words in the file name, use a hyphen (contact-us.html), not underscore (contact_us.html) or space (contact us.html). If you use a blogging engine like Wordpress or Jekyll, your posts may show up like “yoursite.com/2017/10/01/82131”. You can change the setting so that the webpage address will automatically reflect the title of your article instead (like “yoursite.com/2017/10/01/how-to-make-kimchi”).

2. Website title.

Be sure that the title of your web pages actually describes what they are. The title is what you see on top of the web browser window when you look at a page. If you edit an HTML file, this should be found inside the <title> </title> tags inside the <head> </head> element.

The title of each page should contain both the content-specific, page-specific title, as well as the title of the website as a whole (e.g. “Contact us | Catnip Pillows, Inc.”) but the total of a title should ideally be under 60 characters. The website and web page titles are very important because they show up in search engine results as clickable links to your site.

3. Relevant keywords on web pages that occur naturally inside normal sentences.

Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, any keywords on a web page were good. This led people to abuse search engines by “keyword stuffing.”

But today, search engines are smarter and better. You must make a good effort at including relevant keywords within sentences and paragraphs that still look like a natural human writing. You can also bold or italicize certain keywords, but don’t overdo this.

4. Inner URL and inner linking.

Your web pages should have links to other pages on your website. And these URLs should be human-readable and descriptive of contents (see number 2 above).

5. Use of appropriate headings and subheadings (“H” tags).

For search engines and also humans, organize your contents into headings and subheadings. Not only this improves your search engine rankings, it also makes it easier for people to read. And ideally, each paragraph should not exceed 5 lines. Writing for the web is different from writing for your college class.

6. Quality of anchor texts.

Anchor texts refer to HTML tags that form a link to another page on your website or to another website. When you do anchor texts to create a link, the text becomes clickable. Whenever possible, the anchor text should be descriptive of what you are linking it to.

A good example: Limeadestand Works has a low-cost training program for aspiring entrepreneurs. (the hyperlink covers good keywords.)

A bad example: Click here to visit our Creative Liberation Lab! (“here” does not mean anything.)

Another bad example: Creative Liberation Lab is a low-cost online learning center for artists, crafters, and makers with an entrepreneurial aspiration. (Do not hypertext an entire sentence or an excessive number of words!)

7. Quality of outbound links and what the link says.

You improve the ranking of your website when your contents make frequent references to trusted and credible external contents. On the flip side, search engines will “punish” you for linking to known fake news (including obvious parody sites such as The Onion) or conspiracy theory sites.

Usually search engines automatically trust contents from .gov, .int, .mil, or .edu (and their international equivalents such as .gc.ca, go.jp, or .ac.uk), and from well-established .org and .ngo sites.

Also, be vigilant about “dead links” — often external websites you had linked to are gone after a while. Be sure to update or remove links that no longer work.

8. Mobile-first designs.

Today, more than a half of Internet access is through a smartphone or other mobile devices (such as iPad). This means your website must be easy to read on a small touchscreen. Now Google has made mobile-first (responsive) design pretty much mandatory in order for your website to rank at the top of SERPs.

Test if your website is mobile-friendly

9. Optimized images.

Search engines measure the amount of time it takes to load your web pages. One of the things we often forget is the size of images we put on our websites. By “size” it does not just mean how tall and wide in pixels; it also means how many kilobytes an image is. This is an also important concern for people who have a limited or expensive mobile data plan. Be sure to “optimize” your images (this means to reduce the kilobytes of images) before uploading them to your website.

And speaking of images, be sure to include a description of each image inside the <img> tag. Not only that this helps search engines, it also makes your website more accessible to those who have a visual impairment, who relies on a read-out software.

Descriptions of images should look like

<img src=”pears-in-a-basket.jpg” alt=”five pears in a basket”/>

Yes, image file names should also be self-explanatory.

Free image optimizer for website use

10. Minified CSS and JavaScript.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript are important components of modern websites. However, they are usually separate files and they must be downloaded by web browsers in addition to the web pages where your contents reside. They can slow down the load time significantly.

To solve this problem, you can “minify” CSS and JavaScript files. It is also possible to minify HTML files as well.

Minify your HTML here

Minify your CSS here

Minify your JavaScript here

In closing

If these 10 points seem too much and too technical for you, just focus on three things:

How do your URL (web page addresses) look? Are they self-explanatory? Can you guess what they are about when you see the web page addresses?

Are you linking out to high-quality, trustworthy external contents? Are you linking your web pages to other pages inside your website?

Do your anchor texts form useful and relevant keywords?

This is it.

Overwhelmed? Drop us a line.

(Originally published on Oct. 1, 2017.)

[limeadestandworks]

Free for all download: USPS standard format postcard template for Scribus, open-source desktop publishing software

Today, I’d like to bring back one of my most popular and well-received contributions to the world.

In 2009, I made a postcard template for Scribus, a free, open-source desktop publishing software that can create press-ready, professional-grade PDF files for printing. At the time, there were virtually no templates for Scribus. So I made one from scratch. To this day, this template remains popular, and a “scribus postcard template” search still places my template at the top of the search engine result page (SERP). Over time, I have received several positive reviews.

I’m pleased to announce that I have just updated the template for the latest Scribus version 1.4.6., with better instructions.

This template meets the United States Postal Service specifications, specifically Domestic Mail Manual (DMM) 202 in regard to OCR area, as well as specifications for dimensions in DMM 201. To be in compliance with the USPS standards, your postcard should be printed on paper “of uniform thickness and made of unfolded and uncreased paper or cardstock of approximately the quality and weight of a stamped card (i.e., a card available from the USPS). A card must be formed either of one piece of paper or cardstock or of two pieces of paper permanently and uniformly bonded together. The stock used for a card may be of any color or surface that permits the legible printing of the address, postmark, and any required markings.” If you are having your postcards printed by a professional printing company, this should be no problem.

To download this file, use this link. This file should be opened directly from Scribus, although it has a .gz suffix. If your computer automatically tries to do something else to open this file, start Scribus, then go to Files > Open.

An important note to Canadian friends: I checked Canada Post’s specifications and this template appears to not meet the Canadian postal standards (namely, the card is too small for use in Canada). I will make a Canadian version available in the near future, though!

If you don’t have Scribus, download here for free (Windows, MacOS, and Linux). If your computer runs on Ubuntu, LinuxMint, Peppermint OS, or any similar distributions of GNU/Linux, open your terminal instead (usually Ctrl-Alt-T), then type: “sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install scribus” (without the quote marks, of course) — this will install the software from the Ubuntu repository.

And there are quite a few good beginner-friendly tutorials on YouTube.

The template is free for you to use under Creative Commons Public License 4.0 BY-SA. 

(Originally published on Oct. 1, 2017.)

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Perils of Female Empowerment Lifestyle Brand marketing

Once upon a time, it was a very typical multi-day training event for “women entrepreneurs” in a typical American town.

The themes were pretty predictable: “finding your authentic self,” “connecting to the Goddess within,” “how to find your passion for life,” or “how to live a life you want.”

Like many such events, the self-appointed coach or guru who was leading the event had marketed this event using social media, email lists, and fake “webinars” that promised practical solutions (but in reality, all that they did was to make the audience become aware of their “pain island” and behold! pay her thousands of dollars and she — and only she! — would give you a “guaranteed” path to the “pleasure island”). This person, as the clients arrived at the event center, was already known by the clients as a mythical fantasy version of her, the personal brand that is an embodiment of a “powerful woman.” They have heard raving testimonials and reviews (but not honest, negative ones that were conveniently censored out). They have “invested in themselves” already by charging thousands of dollars to their credit cards, with an unsubstantiated hope that such an “investment” would have a high return (where is an investors’ prospectus?).

The gathering started with a circle of predictable middle-class white lady woo-woo sisterhood.

Maybe there’s smudging with sage (a practice stolen from Native Americans and appropriated by the white lady woo-woo sisterhood).

Maybe there are an eclectic collections of “Goddess” figures such as Kwan-Yin (a Mahayana Buddhist bodhisattva, stolen from the East Asian Buddhists who do not usually regard it as a “Goddess”) or figurines of African or Afro-Caribbean goddesses (purchased from a “Tibetan” goods store in a hippie neighborhood!).

Maybe there is a “singing bowl” (a sacred object of Tibetan and East Asian Buddhist observances).

Then there’s ubiquitous “om…. om….. om……”

The coach showed up dressed like a “Gypsy”: complete with a long, flowing and lacy dress in red, pink, and purple; adorned with an impressive selection of jewelry that incorporate a variety of gemstones allegedly with some “healing properties”; and in a fantasy version of “this is what a ‘Goddess’ looks like.”

Cultural appropriations aside, the female empowerment lifestyle brands (FLEBs) often sell themselves based on a set of highly sexist assumptions: women are somehow more “spiritual,” empathetic, “heart-centered” not mind-centered, emotionally-driven not rationally-driven, and so on. This is a very unfortunate use of internalized misogyny, in addition to reinforcing the sex-based stereotypes and projecting them on those who buy FLEBs’ products and services as if being “feminine” is the key to business success.

This excludes neurodiversity and reinforces a questionable and unproven idea that women on the autistic spectrum have an “extreme male brain.”

This excludes women who are atheists, agnostics, or simply those who prefer reason over emotionalism.

This excludes women who are happy with traditional monotheistic faiths (specifically, Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, and Islam) they were raised with, many of whom are overwhelmingly immigrants, people of color, and/or from a lower socioeconomic class.

Instead, this elevates the middle-class “career women” who already possess enough social and economic privileges, who can afford dabbling in New Age woo-woo (which is largely a spiritualized consumerism that costs money), who have never experienced serious life-or-death challenges that require serious faith in order to maintain sanity and survival, who have a luxury of quitting a job in order to pursue self-realization (or, more precisely, ego-inflation).

The FLEBs like to say something like, “being in touch with the Divine Feminine within” will lead to a “lucrative lifestyle business.”

Oddly enough, to the FLEBs, owning and running a business is all about “me, me, and me.” Customers are outside the equation and so are social responsibilities. Customers are only relevant to the FLEBs in so far as they can prey on their customers by exploiting their insecurities and sufferings in order to extract thousands of dollars at a time.

To them, the idea of “service to others” is utterly foreign. Neither is truly listening to the customers since their only guide is their own inflated ego.

Many such women who own or aspire for starting a FLEB marched on January 21 but they’re little different from Donald Trump. After all, Trump is the ultimate lifestyle marketing brand per excellence. Maybe they have a deep, visceral reaction toward the 45th President of the United States of America because they see themselves in him. This is called projecting.

Me, me, me, me, me.

Om, om, om, om, om.

This isn’t liberation, individually or collectively.

(Originally published on Sept. 3, 2017.)

[limeadestandworks]

Social media advertisement and its effectiveness: overrated.

New entrepreneurs are often led to think that Facebook ad is everything they need to promote themselves. They also wrongly assume that social media is there for advertising. But here is something I have learned over time through experience.

Facebook advertisement is easy to get in, but not as effective as it seems to be.

Because nearly everyone you know is on Facebook, and because Facebook now is one of the greatest Big Data aggregators on earth, you may be thinking that if you “boost” your page post every once in a while, you will get results.

Wrong.

First, too many people “boost” indiscriminately. Ultimately, a post intended for advertising is different from regular fan page posts, or anything you may ordinarily share on your own personal profile. Good visuals and copy are critical, and advertising on Facebook like everywhere else must be well-planned in advance. “Boosting” your post is largely a waste of money.

Second, a Facebook ad has a very low threshold for entry. You can advertise there as low as $5. But if your ad does not intrigue people, it’s wasteful. And exposure is very limited. Those Facebook ads you may see frequently are from businesses that spend anywhere between hundreds to thousands of dollars a week.

Third, a Facebook ad shows up randomly on people’s Facebook timelines at unexpected times and unsolicited. And it looks just like someone’s regular Facebook post, except for a small faded word, “sponsored,” below the name of the Facebook page from which advertising originated. Most people, especially smartphone users, simply scroll through these ads without even reading what’s on them. Like the advert banners of the early 2000s, people are now desensitized to Facebook ads.

Do not “boost” Facebook page posts.

Not all posts on your Facebook business page are created equal. It is a colossal waste of money to “boost” contents that lack a clear “call-to-action” (CTA). Don’t spend your money on “boosting” a picture you just posted. All paid advertisement must lead to a clearly defined action, such as a subscription to your mailing list, an information request form, an event attendance, a purchase of a product, or a setting up of an appointment.

A good, effective Facebook ad must be carefully designed for a specific purpose and reason.

Facebook ads are not for promoting local events.

If you are putting on a concert or a festival, the traditional print ads are far more effective than any social media advertisement. Even though running a print ad can be far more expensive, they command a better exposure and reader attention especially if it is a display ad in a local alternative weekly or music/arts/entertainment publication. For some reasons unknown to me, promoting events on Facebook really does not seem to convert very well. To make it worse for you, lots of people do indeed go to your Facebook event page or business page, click on “Interested” or “Like” the post, but they don’t really follow through with ticket purchases and you’re being billed by Facebook for audience engagement.

Facebook page is not advertising.

Almost every start-up business thinks of creating a Facebook page the moment they begin. But just because you have a Facebook page does not mean customers are going to find you.

The ugly history truth: When Facebook began allowing non-college students to sign up (at first, only those with a .edu email address could join Facebook!), many businesses started to sign up, as well. Facebook, finding opportunities as an advertising company, soon introduced “fan pages” and required all businesses and organizations to use them instead of personal profiles. Those who did not were banned from Facebook, or more commonly, forcibly converted to a fan page. Then, in order to sell more ads, Facebook began decreasing the number of exposures these pages would have. Now a typical Facebook page post only shows up on someone’s timeline 1 to 2 percent of the time. This is by design, as Facebook positions itself as an advertising company.

At the same, however, Facebook pages are still meaningful as many people now use the Facebook search box to look up business contact information just as people would use the White Pages back in the 1980s (and online “White Pages” websites in the 1990s till the turn of this century).

If you have something specific to offer, use Google AdWords instead.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter advertisement, Google (and Startpage) displays ads in response to specific search queries, at the top portions of search engine result pages (SERPs). This means you are advertising to a ready audience who are interested in what you have to offer. When someone is using a search engine, they are already in a receptive state.

The downside is that Google AdWords can be somewhat more expensive to start out with.

(Here is a good collection of beginners’ tutorials on Google AdWords.)

The Instagram ad is worthless.

The Instagram ad is offered as an add-on option to your Facebook ad. The problem is that Instagram user behaviors and the mobile-centric nature of the platform mean that people are fast scrolling through an endless stream of pictures and double-tapping at a breakneck speed without even pausing to actually look at those pictures. And the captions are not fully displayed, unless they tap on “more” to actually make an effort to read the captions. While paid ads display a blue-highlighted link beneath the picture that would take users to your website, the Instagram app isn’t a web browser and its webpage display function often crashes if your webpage is large or has lots of multimedia contents (such as videos). This can be a serious problem in particular if your webpage is a “landing page” or any kind of form that collects user information. When I ran ads on Instagram there were lots of views and lots of likes but none of them converted.

Pinterest: a hidden treasure.

I used to think until recently, “Who nowadays still use Pinterest?” But Pinterest is now a very powerful image search engine that shows inspirational (as in inspiring ideas, not as in woo-woo) pictures on any subject matter that people may search. If you are not using Pinterest, you’re missing out. Now, I have not tried paid Pinterest ads, but even without paid ads, it is great for your search engine optimization (SEO) and email list building.

Conclusion

While social media is one of the most accessible advertising platforms for microentrepreneurs, its effectiveness is overrated and return-on-investment (ROI) is fairly low. Don’t expect too much especially when you are new.

(Originally published on Aug. 30, 2017.)

Photo credit: Pixabay/FirmBee, cc0 public domain. Google is a registered trademark of Alphabet. MacBook Air is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc. Any trademark or servicemark appearing herein is used here solely for illustrative purposes. No infringement is intended.

[limeadestandworks]

Rethinking “authority”

The more I become woke and began questioning social assumptions and expectations, the more I examine the seemingly innocuous words I use or hear often.

As I always say, words have meanings and ideas have consequences.

One of such words that I will no longer use is authority.

Authority, as in the content marketing and SEO jargon. The idea is that if you put out genuinely helpful and reliable contents on your blog, the more attention you will receive from your audience as people will share your blog on social media, and the SEO ranking will also improve.

But when you leverage your privilege and systemic oppression in order to promote your business services and products, you are reinforcing the oppressive social construct.

Authoritarianism and an entrepreneur’s aspiration for becoming an “authority” are linked together. In this context, an entrepreneur wants to gain followers who would look up to them/him/her/zir (hereafter, generic they/them, for the sake of brevity) like a cult leader. They want to shut their competitors up. They want to be perceived by the audience as a guru, an expert, or an inspiration.

Now, none of these are inherently wrong. However, when you try to model yourself as an authority figure, subconsciously or otherwise, you also model the predominant cultural narratives of an authority figure. Some of these entrepreneurs push their own personality cults, and others let their own egos inflate to the point where they become incapable of self-critique and open-mindedness to feedback.

Of course, I’d like to keep offering free contents here and on other media platform as my contribution to the discourse. And I certainly hope that most of such contents would be useful and something people would like to share with their friends and colleagues.

But, I don’t have to be an authority figure.

I can be instead a culture-maker.

I am influencing the cultural narratives and discourses so there will be a transformation of cultures. Culture hacking and culture jamming are something I aim to do in order to disrupt the harmful and oppressive culture.

Culture-makers influence and inspire, and ultimately, create a new culture and its institutions.

Culture-makers don’t need followers, just other culture makers to inspire and influence.

And that’s a higher calling than becoming a mere “authority” so you can sell your products.

(Originally published on Aug. 29, 2017.)

[limeadestandworks]

Don’t market like cult recruitment!

In general, I’m no fan of marketing.

Yet, entrepreneurs have got to get themselves out in the world to attract their audience, their prospects, and ultimately, paying customers. Otherwise, they’re toast in no time.

But there is a right way to do it, and a wrong way to do it.

In the interwebz these days, there’s an over-proliferation of online entrepreneurs who style themselves as coaches. This is I think popular because it’s something they can do without an inventory, an overhead, or for that matter, any product, yet they can actually make thousands of dollars per client. This is the new multi-level marketing. Many of these “coaches,” in turn, breed more new “coaches,” who often replicate the marketing methods of their gurus like a contagious disease. I see this as a fluff industry, and its days are counted — another mega-recession will decimate this industry, just as the recessions and technological advances drove many MLMs into oblivion at the turn of the century.

One of the popular approaches for these “coaches” to market themselves is to identify their prospects’ “pain points.” More specifically, they position themselves as the bridge between “Pain Island” and “Pleasure Island.”

While problem-solving is, and ought to be, the cornerstone of any successful entrepreneurship, this focus on fault-finding in order to sell coaching, spiritual woo, or any sort of intangible services that are vague on pricing and are high-ticket items is exactly the modus operandi of cults such as the Unification Church and Scientology. To identify the prospects’ weaknesses and repeatedly preying on that weaknesses is how cults recruit members, drain their life savings, and grow. Those who are recruited into cults that way also develop an unhealthy emotional dependency on the cult — after all, the cult now intimately knows them and they have also invested so much of their money and lives on the cult.

Those people who peddle “lifestyle businesses” are often themselves victims of these pitches, who, in turn, push the same kind of exploitative and manipulative marketing techniques to gain customers — and their product, indeed, is a lifestyle; or, more precisely, a fantasy version of a lifestyle where one can just live a life they want in a luxury. In reality, very few people would make it — just as few as the number of pink Cadillacs driven by Mary Kay “independent distributors.” By the time these aspiring entrepreneurs gambled tens of thousands of dollars (out of credit cards or retirement savings) on coaching sessions, 75 to 95 percent of them fail. But of course, these “coaches,” regardless of whatever they say about how they’re invested in their clients’ success, are not responsible for the failures and financial disasters that befall their clients.

This is unethical, irresponsible, and reckless. And there’s some big money to be made from exploiting people’s weaknesses.

I’m calling for a collective commitment by this industry to uphold the highest level of business ethics. Because, without it, the entire industry will implode in the next few years.

You are not a cult leader, and your customers aren’t proselytes to your personal cult of one. Try to be genuinely helpful.

(Originally published on Aug. 25, 2017.)

[limeadestandworks]

Street newspapers and cautionary tales on how to promote entrepreneurship among the extreme poor

In the 1990s, I began seeing people who stand in front of supermarkets selling “homeless newspapers.” The way it worked was that a small, flimsy tabloid-sized newspaper was sold for a dollar (this was when a copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was 35 cents) and each “vendor” was able to keep 75 cents of that dollar to themselves, minus the 25 cents for the actual cost of publishing that newspaper.

Street newspapers since then have spread internationally. Many of them are now of exceptional quality, whereas in the past, those papers had a feel of an amateurish zine put together by the homeless. The Big Issue is the largest multinational franchise of such papers (actually, magazines), whereas independent publications such as Portland’s Street Roots and Seattle’s Real Change have received many acclaims for their journalistic excellence.

The public pitch for these street newspapers is that they help those who are experiencing homelessness by empowering them to generate income through flexible and independent means.

The reality, however, is nothing more than the optic — the manufactured illusion that these “vendors” are somehow different from panhandlers because they are selling something, they are working. Those same people who tell people not to give money to panhandlers somehow do not seem to have any problem with these street newspaper vendors taking in more cash than the run-of-the-mill panhandlers even though the street papers do not usually monitor or keep track of their earnings. The only indicators in estimating income are how many copies of the newspapers were sold wholesale to the vendors.

Years ago, I wrote news articles for one of such street newspapers and around the same time I attended a vendor orientation out of curiosity. The orientation did very little by way of training people to become a salesperson. Attendees were given 10 free copies of the latest issue, which they were expected to sell on a street corner of their choice (provided that it is not anyone else’s turf and is at least five blocks away from anyone’s turf) and were told that the paper was well-regarded in the community with dedicated readership and thus was an “easy sell.”

In my conversations with some of the better-performing vendors, I found out that the majority of their income came from “tips,” not from newspaper sales. What was actually going on was that those who were great at panhandling were just using the newspaper as a glorified form of a cardboard sign, and passers-by were “buying” a copy for $5, $10, or even more. They often have a high-traffic spot in an upscale shopping area, with their turfs being dictated by seniority.

Yet, for every one of these “successful vendors” there were many more attritions and those who gambled their money on buying more and more copies of newspaper with false hope of making it this week, only to see that hope quickly turning into a disappointment. Some of these people buy papers like they were lottery tickets. And the non-profits who publish the papers never refund unsold copies.

Very quickly I realized that street papers weren’t teaching their vendors to gain any tradable skills such as money management, entrepreneurship, or even salesmanship; rather, they were being a front for panhandlers, to make panhandling more socially acceptable.

An orientation that consists of little more than making them watch a 15-minute video and then sending them their way with 10 free papers is not helping those who are new to the street let alone with any experience with begging in public. And if these non-profits were really serious about creating income opportunities, they would be shutting down their newsroom and instead contract with the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times to sell their publications — even if the per-copy margin may be smaller to the vendors, they are highly respected and high-demand newspapers that appeal to a much larger audience (with a much higher average income bracket). This could go a long way especially if the vendors are required to wear a professional-looking uniform and are trained extensively to project the brands of these newspapers.

In technicality, these non-profits classify the vendors as independent business owners who contract to distribute their publications. Yet, their actual income potentials are limited (aside from so-called “tips” they receive) as you can only sell so many papers every week and each copy only yields 50 to 75 cents (depending on which city they are in). Many street newspapers, distrustful of their vendors (or more often, because of the pressures from local government officials), also prohibit the vendors from anything else while vending.

The success of street newspapers come with a cautionary tale. Even though a small number of vendors even take in enough money each week to rent a small single resident occupancy (SRO) room and then some, the majority of them remain trapped in extreme poverty with no path to advancement.

Promoting a development of microenterprise among those who experience extreme poverty requires a comprehensive social support. Not only that there must be an adequate infrastructure and access to micro-capital, but also a community of mutual support, ongoing professional development, and accountability.

Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank “the bank for the poor,” instituted a five-person support group for those who receive the bank’s micro-credit. And Grameen not only finances individuals but sees its banking activities as an integral part of the social and economic development of the entire village. This type of community-based and peer-driven support system is something that often lacks in street newspapers, in which vendors are largely left alone and expected to fend for themselves from day one without any meaningful training.

(Originally published on Aug. 23, 2017.)

Photo credit: Joe Frazier via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Public License 2.0 BY, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56434543

[limeadestandworks]

Entrepreneurship as practical tools for liberation, not as an end in itself

Those who are familiar with me know many years of my involvement in radical political activism. From time to time, I have taken a number of radical positions on social concerns. For example, I have opposed same-sex marriages because I believed that the institution of marriage was a relic of the oppressive patriarchal social norms, and therefore ought to be abolished altogether instead of being co-opted by middle-class gays and lesbians. Another example: I oppose the private property and believe it should be nationalized along with natural resources, key national-scale industries, and other major means of productions. From time to time I have been mischaracterized as a communist, a fascist, an anarchist, and a few others I would not mention here. (Note: Nowadays I am more of a centrist on many issues after I was really disillusioned with certain elements of the left-radical activism after the demise of the Occupy movement.)

So, after all these years of being a radical rebel, it often comes to many as a surprise that (1) I am an entrepreneur, and (2) I am in the business of “marketing” other entrepreneurs’ businesses and of teaching other people how to become an entrepreneur.

It has been just over a year since I embarked on the latest iteration of this journey in entrepreneurship, but it’s not a new thing.

My debut in micro-enterprise, in fact, was in 2008 when I was experiencing a prolonged homelessness without any foreseeable hope of ending it. Despite the fact that Portland, Oregon was seen as a “bums’ paradise” by many ignorant people, the Public-Private Homeless Charity Industrial Complex offered nothing of substance to those on the street, other than “services” and “resources” that only kept people on the street. Having no way of generating even a smallest of income stream, I was only able to survive because Portland was one place where it was impossible to starve thanks to over-abundance of charities that did nothing but feed the homeless.

One day I saw a flier at a certain social service agency advertising an upcoming class that promised to teach participants how to earn money painting windows during the holiday season. This class was put on by one of the interns who was there from a nearby university. Three people (of hundreds who utilized that facility!) signed up for this, and ultimately, I was the only one who took the idea and ran with it. Between 2008 and 2010, I operated this business literally out of a plastic tub and I painted lots of windows in the greater Portland area including some well-known businesses such as Davis Tools (a defense contractor!), Les Schwab Tire Centers, Lithia Auto, and Pacific Lumber & Truss. I soon expanded this business to traditional sign painting as well as logo design. The original logo of Southeast Grind was my work (the current one is based on my work but redesigned by someone else). I made a few thousand dollars during those years, which had an immensely positive impact in my life. At the time, I knew little about entrepreneurship or business management, but somehow I had a natural knack for it — and without any advertising budget, utilizing only free resources, I grew my business.

I am someone who can attest to the power of micro-enterprise in alleviating the extreme poverty.

In 2011, I joined the second class of the Dorothy Day Community School (DDCS), a community organizing training center that was then run by Sisters Of The Road. As part of this, I was also able to participate in the 2011 Activists Mobilizing for Power (AMP) conference at Reed College, sponsored by the Western States Center.

Together with two other members of the DDCS class, we organized a group called the Jaguar Sisters. Its vision was to create opportunities for self-empowerment, dignity, and personal power to women who are either experiencing homelessness or are seeking to exit survival sex work. Among the three key programs of the Jaguar Sisters, I proposed a creation of a micro-enterprise program in which the women could capitalize on their own creative talents to generate their own income — and ultimately build an hyper-local economy of solidarity by networking and collaborating with one another.

I have not sold out to capitalism.

I make a clear distinction between capitalism and free market economy.

The former is a predatory system by absentee speculators (“investors,” “venture capitalists,” whatever). The latter is the people’s quest for economic and social self-determination apart from the speculators-owned Corporate America, from the governmental system, and from the Public-Private Charity Industrial Complex that all dehumanize us.

I am not here to support or promote “lifestyle business” and “lifestyle marketing,” both of which are mostly about privileged white middle-class people to “live a lifestyle they want.”

Neither my conscience nor my ethics would allow that to happen.

Yes, my Creative Liberation Lab seems to resemble a lot of those “lifestyle business” charlatans who are mostly there to prey on desperate people in a challenging life situation. But similarities end the moment you understand what my vision is: to turn the people on the margins of society into active participants in the local economy is to turn those who are “undesirable” “liabilities to society” into respectable, dignified assets to the community; and in so doing, I disrupt the classist, sexist, heteronormative, racist, ableist social norms, restore the personal power and dignity in every human being, and re-establish the social and economic rights and liberties for those whose rights are systemically denied.

In other words, if it’s not for the liberation of the community and the collective, any claim to “freedom” that comes from entrepreneurship is merely self-serving and therefore is just a vanity. It’s no good.

In a longer term, I’d also like to see those individual micro-entrepreneurs to form joint ventures, cooperatives, chambers of commerce, or worker-owned collectives — thus turning this Micro-Revolution from an individual level to a much greater level of engagement in the community as a visible and independent economic force.

As I have recently written on the website, “Limeadestand Works is here to present a possibility of another path forward for those without socio-economic privileges, with tangible and workable solutions for individuals to undermine the System that does not serve them by using its own game book. In so doing, we not only hope to transform individual lives but also re-shape our culture and build a new world within the shell of the old. We call this process the Micro-Revolution, a radical reclaiming of our human dignity, personal power, socio-economic sovereignty, and freedom. Through Micro-Revolution we learn and achieve to be a ‘master of one’s own destiny.’”

Consider:

More than 80 percent of adults on the autism spectrum are unemployed. Many of them cannot easily participate in the workforce or survive in the workplace culture. Yet, most individuals on the spectrum are talented enough in at least something that they can succeed as a freelancer or an independent entrepreneur.

According to a 2013 study, trans workers were twice as likely to lose their jobs, and 44 percent of those who were employed were under-employed; and are nearly four times as likely as the general population to have an annual income of under $10,000. This has forced many trans folks to survive through sex trade or crimes. Micro-enterprise can provide some solutions to this.

Under the Republican-led Congress and the Trump administration, those who are deemed “unemployable” by the government due to disabilities are likely to experience a steep reduction in their SSI checks — and this follows recent cuts in SNAP benefits. Not all SSI recipients have Section 8 housing subsidies. SNAP cannot be used to purchase medications, personal care items, clothing, or any non-food items, including transportation (transit fares, gas). SSI recipients can see an improvement in their quality of lives, not just in terms of dollars and cents, when they become a business owner and interact with the larger society.

Those who are experiencing homelessness are unlikely to be hired by most employers due to hostile biases and overt discrimination. Many of them also have other barriers to participation in the conventional workforce. “Get a job!” is not a solution.

To sum this up, I’m not here to help privileged people to solve their first-world problems so they can indulge in a hedonistic lifestyle. Too many desperate people who don’t have money, to begin with, are often lured by these “lifestyle marketing” gurus and their illusions of a “six-figure” lifestyle where every day is a vacation on the beach. I’m not here to dupe them into a useless “lifestyle business” fluff, either.

To me, entrepreneurship is just a practical tool in the larger picture of liberation.

And in this society, it provides a much better alternative to a life of dependency on the dehumanizing Public-Private Charity Industrial Complex (a.k.a. poverty pimps) or on the dead-end jobs with the corporations that exploit workers.

(Originally published on Aug. 18, 2017.)

p.s.: The cover photo for this article is Gabriela Rivadeneira, former president of the Legislative Assembly of Ecuador. She is eight years younger than me and has already been to the top of the legislative branch of a national government! Gabriela started her activism when she was 14. I really adore her. When will there be possibilities like this in the U.S.?

Photo credit: De Edjoerv — Trabajo propio, Creative Commons Public License 4.0 BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons

[limeadestandworks]

Limeadestand Works’ commitment to ethical feminist business practices

Because I have been using similar brand communications and marketing techniques to what is used by many self-appointed online marketers and “lifestyle business” experts, lately I have been struggling with the ethical dilemma. Many “lifestyle businesses” perpetuate consumerism and classism, while misappropriating the language of empowerment and liberation.

Many people have a misconception about brand communication as a propaganda art for greedy businesses who want to dupe gullible consumers.

Since a major component of Limeadestand Works’ business is the training of aspiring and new entrepreneurs, and to support other small businesses in their brand communication and public relations efforts, this dilemma has become a serious issue for me.

How can I maintain my “edge” while growing and expanding my business? How can I reinforce ethical and moral principles while providing the best quality of service to my clients? How can I actively work with those who are on the margins of society and are systemically disenfranchised, instead of becoming yet another promoter of white middle-class lifestyle businesses that reinforce the systemic oppression?

Today I have revised the official Statement on Our Core Values and Social Missions as well as the Welcome page.

Just like Lasara Firefox Allen has inspired me in the area of how I articulate my religious message and shape my spiritual practices, Kelly Diels has become a major inspiration in the area of feminist business ethics that is anti-oppressive.

(Originally published on Aug. 10, 2017.)

[limeadestandworks]

Forget social media marketing! Like, now!

In 2017, social media marketing has become almost a cliche. People are talking today as if every business somehow has to have a Facebook page at the time when many people are leaving Facebook.

It is a bit reminiscent of 20 years ago, in 1997, every mom-and-pop business in town was on the website and domain name bandwagon. Never mind their websites mostly sucked, many of them little more than a picture, cheesy animated GIFs, street address, and phone number. At the time, saying “visit our homepage” and “dot com” made every business owner feel like they were cutting edge.

While the Internet indeed made it possible for thousands of micro-entrepreneurs to launch and grow their businesses with a low capital requirement (eBay and PayPal were instrumental!), to others, it has become a waste of time and money. Cheap websites soon gave way to the SEO fad of the mid to late 2000s, and now we have social media marketing, seen by many as the magic formula in which anyone can make it big for free. After all, it’s free to use Facebook and everyone has a Facebook, not? (Yes, I have said before that Facebook became the de facto “White Pages” of our time — people do indeed look up business contact information through Facebook search; however, as with the White Pages phone books, they have to know the exact name of your business for this to work.)

If you are even moderately interested in entrepreneurship, you must have seen various Facebook ads or direct emails touting the latest success blueprint in social media marketing. They say you can reach millions and you can make a six-figure income in a year or less.

Forget it.

In fact, if that’s what you think, forget social media marketing altogether. Get off the Internet, hit the pavement, and do your marketing the old-fashioned way like in the 1980s.*

Social media aren’t a supernatural dragnet to attract prospects and customers with little efforts and no money. What these “experts” conveniently forget to tell you is this: (1) it is pretty expensive to reach literally millions — indeed, they spend hundreds of dollars every week so you see their ads; (2) social media marketing is an engagement tool, and it works remarkably well if and only if you have a substantial following and/or brand awareness — as a new entrepreneur, you have neither (ultimately, you will have to buy a traffic to create any level of brand awareness).

A typical Facebook page post generally results in 1 to 2 percent of organic reach (meaning free exposures) — to those who are already following your page. If you have a small business Facebook page with less than 100 “likes,” it is common that many of your page posts do not even reach one person (you can check this by looking at your page statistics). For those who already know your business or brand, to reach them better, I recommend you to start a Facebook group.

Instagram and Twitter have different dynamics altogether. While you may get more “likes” it is a short-attention-span platform and each post has a very short lifespan (approximately 18 minutes for a Tweet). Getting people engaged requires you to make them click a link to your blog, website, or landing page (on Instagram, you can only do this on your biography, or must purchase advertising through Facebook to insert a “call to action” link below your photo and above your caption).

The gist of all this is this: social media marketing is not necessarily a great tool to reach complete strangers who have never heard of your business. For a locally-based micro business to reach new customers and prospects, traditional advertising media work more effectively. If you live in a small town, be sure to send press releases to your small-town newspaper regularly, attend any local chamber of commerce events, and make real-life person-to-person connections. Advertising in a neighborhood newspaper or niche-specific magazine can also be effective.

More importantly, do not ever forget this: all marketing is relationship building. Insofar as you utilize social media as an extension of relationship-building and fostering positive connections, it’s useful and can even be very powerful. But too many people mistake social media and any digital marketing efforts as something anonymous, something you can do hiding behind your computer and broadcast your sales pitch.

Social media isn’t broadcasting. If you want to broadcast, buy a radio ad.

By design, social media (and the Internet in general) are “narrow-casting” appealing to a small set of the population who shares specific affinity and interests. This is true with Facebook ads, Google AdWords, and even your own website and blogs. Reaching millions — or even 100,000 — should never be your objective. Instead, you think of your hypothetical customer prototype, and craft your message to appeal to that person.

When people respond to your social media ads or posts by commenting, reposting, or liking, be sure to engage. Answer their questions and concerns promptly. Start conversations. Let them know that there is a real living, breathing person behind your digital marketing presence, and you actually care about what they have to say.

In the early days of the popularized Internet, we spoke of “cyber-malls,” “information superhighway,” and “global villages.” We thought of the Internet as a digital incarnation (or, discarnation?) of the real world. And even with the Internet, much of real transactions took place offline. It was common back then for people to sign up online for paper newsletters, which one would mail them every month.

I reiterate: there is no such thing as “social media marketing” if not for creating and cultivating relationships.

Just because you post your sales pitch on Facebook or Twitter every day doesn’t mean you’re marketing. It’s not working for you, so just forget it, stop fooling yourself into thinking that you’re working hard by spending lots of hours on social media. Instead, use social media with genuine intentions to engage in conversations and help people.

A case study of how old-fashioned guerrilla advertising creates brand awareness for new microenterprises

Since I told readers to forget social media and hit the pavement, I’d like to present one example of how going offline could be more effective in generating brand awareness for a small, no-budget micro business.

A year ago, I lived in Southeast Portland and there was a coffee house that was my favorite hangout. This place still looks and feels like a throwback to the Portland of the 1990s. One day I saw a postcard that looked like handmade (actually it was a full-color reproduction of a handmade artwork) that featured an adorable drawing of cats and a girl-with-a-happy-face with a caption that read “PDX Cat Stalker.”

Over the following weeks, I saw the same artwork reproduced on letter-size paper (black and white) and stapled to electrical poles all over the neighborhood.

The ad was simple in its message: a veterinary technician offering cat claw clipping and cat-sitting services. The former is a big challenge for many cat lovers, while those who travel a lot always are in need for someone to feed and care for their felines.

While the business had a Gmail address and a domain name registered, brand awareness was built primarily on the ground as the owner literally hit the pavement, dropped off stacks of postcards at various high-traffic and high-visibility neighborhood haunts and stapled fliers onto poles and bulletin boards. Social media only followed after this as engagement tools (mostly featuring cat pictures, of course).

But what is the cleverest of all is the brand. You know of crazy cat ladies. But imagine a cat stalker! Just the mental imagery the phrase evokes is incredibly potent. And it happens that the owner of this feline care business is named Sophia Stalker (the “professional cat lady”).

(Originally published on May 9, 2017.)