I’ve had a lot of comments about the great header graphic I have on my blog. Like the majority of you, I bought my graphic from Planet Divinity but what made the difference is that I supplied my own images and sent a note to say that I would like a sepia look to the header to go with the orange/brown theme.

These are the images I provided and all of them are in the public domain and were free to use.

I have provided a few resources for public domain images in my post titled Graphics and the Public Domain and I would suggest looking through these sites to find images to spice up your blog posts.

To give you more resources I am going into further detail with a new report titled 25 Places on the Internet to Find Public Domain Images. It is freely available to my subscribers. If you would like a copy of the report simply sign up for my newsletter and I’ll send you a download link.

 Just recently I was having a massive huck-out of office filing cabinets and I came across a file from around 1990 when we had a yachting magazine. All of our camera gear had been stolen and I found the quotes for new gear and, more importantly a brochure for the Nikon F4 we were replacing.

I really haven’t sold much on eBay in the way of physical products for some time because shipping had become so expensive and our dollar (NZ) had strengthened significantly against the US dollar to the extent that it wasn’t worthwhile.

Recent events have seen our dollar plummet almost to the level when I first started selling which meant for every US dollar I made, I received two New Zealand dollars. This is great for selling and lousy for buying.

But back to the stolen camera. I was about to throw out the brochure but decided to look it up on eBay … just in case. Sure enough an identical brochure sold just the other week for US$28. At that price I would have made close to a $50 profit when converted to my currency. So it’s not just the antique brochures and catalogues which sell well on eBay. Reasonably contemporary items in the right niche can also sell well and will often be easier to get hold of than antique and vintage print items.

I will list the brochure and let you know how I get on.

I have a little eBook gripe. And it’s not a gripe about the fluff and foam that some writers use to pad out their product, or the books that are not much more than a collection of affiliate links. It’s not even a gripe about not taking the time to run the text through a spelling and grammar checker … heaven knows I’m not an English major.

It’s about linking and interactivity.

Firstly, I never read the introductions to anything. I’m one of those people who inexplicably browses through magazines and newspapers backwards. This means all the good work editors and designers do at the start of a story — witty intro, beautiful opening spread across a couple of pages, enchanting graphics — is completely wasted on me. I decide which story I’m going to read by having a look at the summing up and then reading a paragraph or two from the middle of the story.

When it comes to reading eBooks I’m all over the place because dodging the fluff can take quite some skill. I’d rather have a 17-page eBook filled with nitty-gritty than a 117-page eBook. But here is my main eBook gripe and every eBook producer who commits this crime gets a point deducted immediately –  Unlinked Contents Pages.

I don’t know if it is laziness or a lack of knowledge but eBook creators, it is REALLY SIMPLE TO LINK YOUR CONTENTS PAGES to the appropriate place in the pdf document. Isn’t it ironic that most eBook authors have little difficulty linking to affiliate products but can’t link to their own chapter headings?

In the early eBook days it was most uncommon to find a book without a linked contents or index file but that’s not the case now. Does this bother anyone else, or am I being picky?

As part of the Masterclass John suggested we purchase header and footer graphics for our blogs.

Normally I would have made up something myself and this would generally turn out to be some type with a keyline or a drop shadow … and on a particularly creative day the header would have both! Generally I would add an image of some sort which would sit all lonely in a corner and the entire “piece” would have a rather disjointed and unfinished appearance.

Because I’m feeling a lot more focussed I decided to follow John’s advice and order myself header and footer graphics from Planet Divinity. Well you can judge for yourself but I’m seriously impressed with the job Planet Divinity did for me. Not only did they fully grasp the look I required (despite my very brief notes), but their turnaround time was unbelievably quick.

Along with my instructions I sent a selection of four images I had discovered at one of my favourite public domain sites. I think they have given the header a very appropriate “feel”.

Public domain image resources are very useful to have on hand to “pretty-up” a blog or website.  I’d like to share with you some of my favourites which I hope you find useful:

1.  Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection.

2.  The goal of the Bookscans Project is to provide a visual catalog of ALL vintage American paperbacks.

3. Nice collection of Victorian and Edwardian clipart in the public domain.

4. NASA images … space, astronauts, planets and more.

5. Animals, plants, crops and farm images can be found at the US Department of Agriculture .

If you like these resources please subscribe to my blog updates as I’ll be sharing more resources as we go along.

So what exactly was it that got in my way and made me lose FOCUS, you ask? Squidoo, that’s what. The big octopus embraced me with her tentacles and like a Siren, lured me to my watery doom.

Well that’s a bit dramatic. It was, however, a watery day that I lost my focus through a bout of cabin fever away at the beach house. It was raining, pelting down, and I had been stuck inside for a few hours when I suddenly had some sort of brain aberration and thought: “I bet people are making money with Squidoo”.

So I veered off along the Squidoo route thinking if people are making money with something Sod’s Law says that they’re going to write an eBook about it.

I’M TELLING YOU … THEY ARE, AND THEY DID! I bought two books … just in case the weather had set in for some time.

One was The Secret Cash Machine on Squidoo by Karl Pemberton and the other was Squidoo Queen V2.1 by Kelly Stone.

And if I can just keep my focus here for a bit, I’ll tell you what I thought of them.

If you’re interested, Boston terrier’s in the news is the first lens I built.

I’m on Week Two of John Thornhill’s marketing masterclass (that’s John of eBay PowerSeller in 90 Days fame) . Yes, I’m running further behind the other students. Typically I’m the kid who was invariably late with a homework assignment. Now I’m cramming, and I have no excuse for that.

But it’s not laziness or 24-hour clubbing that has put me behind. Neither is it charitable works. I have been busy on all sorts of projects. Understand I’m one of those people who has difficulty staying focused, but do stay with me for the ride because who knows what direction we’ll take.

Focus is the key to success. I promised myself when I started this course that 2009 was going to be the year I kept my eye on the ball and I have, to an extent. It’s just that there are a few balls I needed to watch.

So I have written the word, FOCUS, on a sticky post-it note and it hangs like fly-paper from my computer monitor. When I go off the rails I look at that word and remember all those little promises I made myself when I signed up for John’s wonderful course. Some days it even works!