Working at Home on the Internet » Rants

Tip: Get Billing Info Up Front

Joe Hauckes — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:42:50 +0000

Ok, I’ve taken my head out of the sand, started writing more, been working on getting new clients and overall it seems to be working.

I have had more calls from “potential clients” and have been, I think, helpful in answering their questions and solving their problems. Getting them to pay is another story altogether.

A good example of this occurred over the weekend – a Holiday Weekend – when I got a desparate phone call. Well, it was a series of short phone calls because “Silver” was having touble booting her system up to Windows. She apparently got my information through a Google search where she found my MCBS post about booting problems.

Long story short… I offered her some suggestions on how to boot up her system. She tried each one and none seemed to work so I told her she might have to reinstall her Windows XP from scratch and guess what? She had NO installation disk, NO recovery disk, NO backup and couldn’t start Windows in Safe Mode.

I mentioned to her that I could probably find a way to recover her hard drive with what disks she did have, but it would take some time and I would have to charge her. When I asked for her e-mail address to send her a bill for the additional help… “Click”. Not even a thank you.

I wasn’t even going to charge her for the hour I took out of my Holiday to try to help her, only for the additional time it would take to get her system up and running.

So, Lesson Learned.

I plan on getting ALL pertinent information up front, not just the persons name, but also any billing information that may be needed later.

How would you have handled an emergency call for your services on a Holiday Weekend? Do you always get the billing information up front?

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Were’d I Go Wrong?

Joe Hauckes — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:13:14 +0000

Frankly, I have no idea.

Numbers keep dropping.

There are fewer Pageviews, and fewer comments, less participation on polls and subscriptions seem to be on a permanent Roller Coaster Ride.

Not to mention my great eBook. I have an average of 10 views per day on Scribd, but -0- sales in the past 2 weeks for that Big Flop.

And as far as the Computer Consulting Business is concerned, forget it. I usually just get a great Thanks, you were so helpful or when I offer to send an estimate for a job, the potential client just disappears.

I’d be embarrassed to mention what my PayPal or Bank Accounts look like at the moment.

Things were better only a few months ago and I had a great reader base and community, loyal customers, and decent income with the consulting business. But Now?

I guess we can file this under the Tribulations section of Working at Home.

Sorry, I don’t want to sound like a complainer, but things are Tuff. I know I’m not alone in this, but there has to be an answer for entrepreneurs running into the same problems financially. Could it be Marketing or Advertising, or something else I seem to be missing?

What I’d like to do is open up the comments for any suggestions or complaints that you have as an Entrepreneur, working at home or otherwise.

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WAHI Weekend Wrap-up XIX

Joe Hauckes — Sat, 23 May 2009 11:18:09 +0000

This is a bit of a rant (but I don’t go too far off the wall). It’s more about how things can just happen to all of us. It’s a little long at 10:00 minutes, but it may be worth listening.

The beginning thoughts…

Wednesday, I was setting up a Blog for K (I’ve been trying to talk her into doing some writing about her stuff).I had no problem setting up a Sub-domain on my Personal Blog so she would have her own setup.

That’s when the trouble started… I installed WP on the Sub-domain but for some reason it installed on the MCBS blog. I thought it went were it was supposed to & tried to uninstall it because it was having some minor problems. No idea how that happened, probably a slip of the mouse?

BUT… When I did the uninstall it uninstalled the MCBS blog. That’s when I found out that it never installed where it was supposed to but OVER My Business Blog.

This is a lot more than you probably want to know, but it may just give you an idea of how mistakes are made, even by professionals.

Oh, and sorry, but if you made a comment since 5/18 it ain’t there. I couldn’t recover comments, so you may want to say your piece again.

As always, if you are an RSS or e-mail subscriber, please Click Here to View the Video.

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Selective Taxation, Who’s Next?

Joe Hauckes — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:54:15 +0000

I don’t usually write anything involving politics here, but this is more about Taxing one group unfairly and how I think it will evolve into Taxing anyone that is convienent to pick on at the time.

On Wednesday April 1, 2009 the Tax on Tobacco products is going up. It seems that Cigarette’s are the main target, but Cigars, Pipe Tobacco and Chew are not exempt.

Cigarettes are Taxed at $.39 cents per pack at present. On Wednesday the Tax per pack will go up to $1.01 or on increase of $.62 (that’s 159%).

“So what”, you say, “I don’t smoke and they deserve the increase for the inconvience of second hand smoke anyway.”

Here’s why you should care.

Cigarette Manufacturers already raised the price to offset any DECREASE in consumption. That means they KNOW that people will quit smoking or at least cut back on purchases.
The Manufacturers KNOW that will mean a DECREASE in REVENUE. Fewer people buying the product, the lower amount of money that will be earned, the less the Government will make in TAXES.
The fewer people who purchase Tobacco products, the lower the TAX Revenue, the More they either raise the TAX Again, or find another source.

Where does the Government find New Tax Revenue when People Quit Smoking?

Let’s just pick on the Next Most Likely Patsey. Beer and Liquor.

They already tried Prohibition, and it didn’t work, so they started Taxing Booze.
There are States that Actually still own the Liquor Stores (Pa for Example) that the States use to meet their Budgets.
The States that allow privately owned distributors are Taxed to the Hilt already, but people quit smoking so it has to come from somewhere.
Ok, so Prohibition actually worked by Over Taxing Consumers, so where does the Government go next?

Gamblers? People think they shouldn’t waste their money that way anyway.

The Big Gambling Houses in Atlantic City and Las Vegas are already Taxed so high that it a wonder they didn’t go Bankrupt years ago.
L.V. & A.C. are already showing losses in Local Taxes with the DECREASE in Tourists and Visitors to their Cities.
There is a Further DECREASE in Gambling by said Gamblers since they can’t afford to waste money that they need to pay for Rent and Food.
Oh, and there are a Lot of STATES that run Lotteries, are the STATES going to have to Pay Fed TAXES on the revenue from those Gamblers?

Well, they are all the Dupes I can think of, so where does the Government get the REST of the MONEY to pay for the BAIL OUT.

Who’s Next?

YOU, of course.

Gas TAXES, Income TAXES, Small Business TAXES, Property TAXES, Food TAXES, and anything elxe they can think of to TAX.

What’s your take? Please let me know what you think about Selective Taxation.

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What Happened to WP-Polls?

Joe Hauckes — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:27:10 +0000

I was going to write about the FaceBook fiasco, but there are so many posts, pro and con, that it would be like beating a dead horse. But, in the process of looking up a previous post I had written about why I stopped using FB, I found a poll I did about Social Media.

Guess what the poll showed. No, Nothing about the original poll or social media. It show This Weeks Poll about the Video Wrap-up.

I looked at a couple more “closed” polls and they were all showing This Weeks Poll! Waaa?

I wonder if this has been happening all along. There are a total of 21 Polls that I have conducted over the 3 years this blog has existed. Are they all like that, showing only the Active Current Poll no matter what the old one was about?

I have used WP-Polls since forever, and even have the latest update. Did the newest version of the plugin cause the problem or has it always existed? I never noticed this crop up before, but I don’t think this is a good thing for some reason.

Needless to say, I will close the current poll and would like to thank the 2 people who answered. Sorry if you wanted to voice your opinion on the poll, but you are always welcome to use comments to tell me what you think.

I WILL investigate this further and let you know what I found out.

Update!

I went through the Forum over at Lester Chan’s (the plugin author) and way back with WP2.5 he made a change from using [ poll=# ] to [ poll id="#" ] The problem is that there was never an update about the new way of doing things in the Poll Usage (which is no longer a part of the setup).

Now I have to go back through all 21 polls that I have and change the code to the new way of doing thing. Aaahhhh!

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