Groupon, consumer tip and Joe's Story

I am not going to sell "Joe's Story: The Book of a Lifetime" by using coupons any time soon.
I don't want to put it on the best seller list by losing my life savings while doing it.

I blogged a while back about my opinion of groupon and similar sites. I received a slew of comments, over 75% were negative, expressing dissatisfaction and lack of support with issues. The positive comments expressed good experiences and satisfaction. Those were concerning the coupon buyers. I also received several comments from the sellers of the coupons, none of which were totally positive. Mostly they said they didn't do their homework when it came to profitability along with the huge numbers of coupon customers. Sure, they received a good chunk of change, mostly when business was down. However, the huge sum did not come any where near covering expenses, especially when the very unprofitable coupon buyers wanted to use them when they could be dealing with profitable customers instead. One of them said that if they were to honor all the coupons in a short time they would surely have to close before they went into bankruptcy. That's a no-win situation if you ask me.

Being a coupon clipper myself I can understand the desire for a good deal. every time I save a dollar I am giving myself a raise for that moment. We can all use a little of that can't we? But, as a business man I also know first hand the need to make a profit. Nothing would bother me more than to go home at the end of a week of hard work and tell my family I worked all week and have no money for food. And that's exactly what some of those offers represent to businesses. Please let me explain.

It is my understanding the coupon offers go like this: A business offers a product or service for at least 40% off. Lets say, I will cut your lawn for a month. This service usually costs $85, the coupon offer is priced at $45 to the buyer. Good deal so far huh? Now, just in case you didn't know or care, the website receives one half of that money, $22.50 and the lawn maintenance service receives $22.50. If there are 4 weeks in a month that amounts to $5.12 a week to have your grass cut. Would you cut any ones grass for $5.12? Expenses alone would amount to that. Then there is equipment repair, travel costs and the need to make a profit. If you had to make a choice and cut someones grass for $5.12 at one place and received $22 at another place, which one would you choose? No wonder I received so many unsatisfactory comments. I don't say not to buy those wonderful coupons but I do say that you should read all the information you can so you don't wind up buying something you can't use and lose your money or walk away wishing all upset because you didn't get what you wanted. To the buyers: Buy smart! Be happy! Save lots of money! To the sellers: Don't stick your neck out and lose your business or get a black eye from a lot of unhappy customers. Bad news travels ten times as fast as good news.

That's my consumer tip for the day. I don't like to be redundant but it's a very popular subject.

Birds, Jesus and onions

"Joe's Story: The Book of a Lifetime," has a lot of good stuff in it for an inquisitive mind. All through my life I've been interested in questions that required some research. It was during the researching of one question that I found the answers to dozens of other questions which led to still other questions and answers. At one time in my preteen youth I read every word in the family dictionary and in my early teens poured over every volume of the Colliers Encyclopedia my folks just bought. My favorite printing of books was the "My Book House" collection that came free with the encyclopedias. If asked to remember what I read I couldn't begin to tell you. It didn't make me any smarter either. I do not have a photographic memory. I've read the bible cover to cover at least 5 times. I can't give you a single chapter and verse like so many others I've heard. What all that reading did was give me a thing called recall. Recall gives me a foundation to learn whatever I have to learn at the time very easily. The reason is probably that the reading of all those pages gave me a sense of wonder and purpose in this world, even for the seemingly trivial. My latest questions are these:

Do Hummingbirds really migrate South by slipping under the feathers of Geese?

Does the vortex of a flushed toilet really spin in different directions depending on which side of the equator you are on? Secondary Question- If so, which way does it spin on the equator itself?

Does all lightning go from cloud to ground or does it sometimes go from ground to cloud?

What is Gin flavored with? Secondary question-What taste is Vodka? Thirdindary question-Do onions really have a taste when you take the smell away?

Was the first real newspaper written in German of French or maybe Greek?

Was the first American newspaper printed in 1690 or 1704?

What language did Jesus speak: Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew?

Does a baseball warp when thrown by a professional pitcher?

As you can plainly see, my curiosity knows no bounds or particular signs of relativity. It helps that education is free from all sorts of medias. Tell everyone you know about Joe's Story, then we can all join the fun of learning interesting stuff can't we?

Writing and blogging and authoring

Write, blog, write, blog, write blog. That's what my publicist said to do. I write and blog because I enjoy doing them. When he told me to do it even more I could only say, "Yes!!!"

Exactly what does this get me: all this writing and blogging? Exposure maybe? Experience maybe? After 3 years I have found that it brings those and much more to my life. Cases and cases upon cases of "Joe's Story: The Book of a Lifetime" have been sold. I've had several speaking engagements combined often with book signings because of my blogging and additional writings. The experiences have been very fulfilling and satisfying. Thousands of people have taken the time to write me concerning the book and how it affected their lives for the better. I haven't made a dime from it all. That in no way diminished my pleasure in writing Joe's Story or talking to people about it.

The writing and blogging only add to the experience. I do have the dream of becoming a popular, well known writer and commentator. Only a chosen few will experience those situations. That's fine by me I guess. I'm having a great time anyway. Writing and blogging bring me internal feelings of satisfaction others will never know. I've matched wits with some really intelligent and knowledgeable people because of being a published author. Some incredibly well known people have read Joe's Story and described to me how much they enjoyed and learned from its pages of memories. The most common question I am asked is: "How did you make it into adulthood without getting killed?" My only answer: "By the grace of God."

Writing and blogging is as much a part of me as of any author out there. Maybe I'm not on the best seller list yet but that doesn't make me any different than those that are. We write because something has welled up inside of us to the point where we can no longer keep it to ourselves. Although, there are times when I feel very much like the little, tag along, pain in the butt brother I must have been to my older sibling when we were growing up. I admired my older brother and he was my hero. I wanted to be just like him. I feel like that about the authors on the best seller list too.

Meanwhile, here I sit, writing and blogging, writing and blogging, writing and blogging. Just like my publicist told me to do. That's what writers and authors do.