Where has Paul Been???

Wow, I can't believe it has been over a MONTH since I last posted. The honest truth is: I have been WAAAAAAY busy. I've had school, work, life, and I lost track of my blog :( but I'm back!!!

So, what have I been up to? Well I finished up my Junior year at Michigan State (man that feels weird to say) and, save for a small 3.5 blemish from a class I went to...oh, I don't know, 3 times in the semester, I had a 4.0 (woot!) To get that 4.0 (almost), however, I worked my butt off. I also had life: let's face it, junior year of college, there is a LOT to do, and this was definitely one of my more social semesters. I had made some new friends, and some new traditions that ate up a lot of time. Who could say no to dollar burgers on Wednesdays? And now! I have work. I got out of school on the 8th of April, and I began work on the 19th. That time in between consisted of plenty of packing, flying, driving, traveling, unpacking, moving in, learning a new area, etc.

Well, I am happy to say, I am finally getting well settled in my new home (for 12 weeks at least) in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Where is Wilkes-Barre? It's very close to Scranton (which The Office fans have surely heard of) and is actually quite a nice town. I was not quite sure what to expect...a friend's brother told me that all there was to do in Wilkes-Barre was "sniff coal dust and look at poverty". I was worried to say the least. I got here, and it turns out it is quite a charming CITY. Not a town, a city, it's actually a fair sized city, not so small that you can't find anything to do, not so large that you feel anonymous within its' limits.

I am now working for Kraft Foods in the Export Control group. This was a HUGE surprise for me, especially since I was originally told I would be working in Chicago (wtf?) but then I got assigned to Wilkes-Barre (pronounced WILLKS-BARRY) and I was a little mad, I began thinking "maybe I should have waited for Staples...maybe I should have gone with Holcim! I mean, I wanted a consulting job, but I didn't get one, and now I am stuck in the middle of no where, I only took this job because I was afraid of not getting another job..." Well, it turned out to be a blessing.

First of all, the people/culture at Kraft are to be envied by everyone; very laid back, and yet professional. I am in the export control group, which means INSTANT international exposure. Whether or not I decide to take a role with Kraft (if I am offered one), I will have that to talk about, and international experience is vital in today's world. We get plenty of free food (it's Kraft, they have like 49238135109 brands), and I get the benefit of working for a fortune 100 company, who has like 6-8 brands over a Billion Dollars, and like 500 over $100 M. It is unreal how many huge names are actually Kraft.

Remember, just because you may think you've made a horrible decision, it may work out for the best. I am now at Kraft, in their Export group, meeting GREAT people, making GREAT networking connections, and I am actually coming in as some sort of a consulting role. They take me seriously, and are interested in hearing what I have to say, and how I can apply my school learning to their company. "You may find a better way to do something, then a year later, someone new comes along and finds an even better way to do it, you've got to be flexible, and ready to accept better ways of doing things," one of my managers said to me.

I will be taking pictures/video of my apartment here in Wilkes-Barre, so you can all see it. I have had plenty of fun outings already: we went as an office to see the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, one of the Yankee's AAA teams play, and they had some really sweet firework after the show. The next day, I got to go golfing with some guys from the office (including the director of the office I work at), and in 8 days, I turn 21 (woot!). I plan on doing PLENTY of traveling (this weekend, I go to Pittsburgh) to Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Roanoke, Boston, and Dallas (I'll be there for the 4th of July :D )

Hopefully I will have more time to write. I have done some reading on Neville's Financial Blog, and I realized that in trying to find ways to make money on the Internet/in a dorm room, I have focused WAY too much on selling, and could focus on services. A lot of his business ideas are service based; I guess because I grew up making a small fortune (for my age) on e-bay, I am just used to selling physical goods.

I will hopefully be coming up with some new business ideas in the near future (gotta get some beer money somehow)

Until then, I bid you adieu.

Taking Effective Product Photos

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Back to the regular grind. I will be finished with my semester in about 2 weeks of classes, including my finals. This may be my last post for a couple of weeks as I prepare for, and take my finals.

I have gotten my Wine Making Kit online, as well as the required Wine Making Kit Refill


If you have any sort of web store, or are selling any items on the internet, or anywhere, for that matter, you will need to take enticing product photos. I will try to provide a short description of a technique for taking simple, effective product photos.

1. You will need a place to take the photos.

I fashioned a simple "photo studio" which serves my purpose. You may, if you wish, purchase a "home product studio" from several retailers. These are more professional, and have everything you need, but you will pay for it.This is effective, and will serve your purpose if you have the cash. You can find this studio at first street, among other places. If you have $60 to spare on your business, go ahead. I do not, however. If you will be taking TONS of photos, this is worth it, I, however, do not have enough turnover to make it worth my while.

I fashioned my own studio which works very effectively. I simply used 4 different pieces of computer paper to fashion my own little studio. I just took a little time, and some tape, and formed exactly what I needed, add a light to the picture (it's a pun, get it?) and voila!

To make these:

• I folded the side pieces, so, when laid on top of the other piece of paper, they would reach the end.
• Tape them to the back piece of paper.
• Tape the bottom piece of paper to the walls.
• You are finished making it.

Now, you need a light for...lighting. I shine a nice light straight up, and then use another piece of paper to reflect the light back down onto the products. This gives a nice light effect (DO NOT USE A FLASH!)

I turned off the lights in the room, shined my light straight up, reflected the light back down on the product, and got a result as follows:
A little quick photo editing yielded me:
This was as simple as pie. Well, it sounds simple as pie, but how exactly did I do it?

2. Get a decent camera

I used the Panasonic Lumix FZ28, which I just got, and think is an INCREDIBLE camera. You do NOT need a super complicated camera. Certainly, the nicer the camera, the nicer the photos, but you will not get bad photos from a less than stellar camera. Ideally, you will want some manual settings. I set my shutter to 8 seconds, at and ISO of 100, and got great results.

You do not need to be perfect, but here are the settings I used:
Shutter priority
ISO 100
Shutter time of 8 seconds (Also tried with 6, and 4 seconds with good results)
NO FLASH

You will likely need a tripod, or some sort of stable place to put your camera. With these long shutter times, it is very easy to get a blurry image. You can get a cheap tripod on e-Bay. While not necessary, make sure you at least have a way to keep the camera very steady.

If you can set these settings, try them out. The important thing is to try to work out what settings are needed for your own camera. These worked for me, but may be terrible for your settings, only time will tell.

3. Edit the photo

At the very least, you can put your photo up without any editing, but you will benefit from some editing. If you have adobe Photoshop, and you know how to use it well, you are pretty much done with anything I could tell you.

You will want to do some cropping, which can be done in very simple programs, even windows picture editor can crop. If you want to do a little more work, try GIMP. It is a toned down photo editor like Photoshop, which is completely free. I have used GIMP do do some very nice effects, and though I don't like it as much as Photoshop, it works well. I used a clone stamp tool to fill in some areas which were not what I wanted them to look like. For example:




This was the original photo, taken with only the little photo studio I fashioned.












You can see the difference that can be made upon a photo with just some simple editing tricks.






4. Publish the Photo

You'll want to make sure you save the photo in the proper settings for your personal sales website. My main requirement is that I save in a square. Beyond that, it can be in any size, and it will be fixed by ecrater.


I hope that helps out, it's a simple process, and it can be repeated for any products. Picture here were my Wine Making kit, and Wine Making Refill Kit.

• Make a simple studio
• Get a simple camera
• Take some photos
• Do some editing
• Sell some products

If you have any questions, please contact me at ContactUs@dorm-gear.com

If you have read this post on facebook, the complete blog is available at www.dormroombiz.com

I'll be out of town.

Quick update. I found a shopping cart I can use on my independent store, where I don't use ecrater. That is basically all I need beside web hosting. I will continue using Google Checkout, and will design my own site. I need a host...if you know any cheap or free ones, let me know :)

I'll be in Florida for a little while, and will not have regular internet access, so I'll not be able to post for a few days.

New work on Webstore

Well I've begun working a little bit on the store again. I've got some down time since I just got my wisdom teeth out. I am working on creating product photos for the other glowing shot glasses (finally) and hope to have those finished soon. I've been neglecting the store I feel, and need to get going. I have some plans for the store this summer:

• Get a real store up instead of just using ecrater
• Get new product photos
• Create pre-made magnets so people don't have to rely on doing their own designs

Those are my 3 main goals. I would also like to find some new products, but I'll be out of the country for a month, so I don't have a lot of time to work with it this summer.

Store Updated

All of my inventory is now available on my store (dorm-gear.com) I finally got it all updated, and I'm very excited, I think I can finally start some advertising. I know I'm going to put up signs around campus; I feel that will be the best advertising. If you have any ideas, I would LOVE to hear them.

I have also begun work on an access database to manage my orders, products, and inventory. As it turns out, this is a bigger project than I had expected; I guess I know less about access than I had previously thought. I finally figured out how to do some things, like automatically add one to my highest invoice number, so they are sequential, but I will not have gaps in the data. I want to build it using mostly forms, so I can have a very simple method of adding data to the database.

I think what I'll do is just take my time trying to get this system up and running, I don't think it has to be rushed, but it's also a great learning experience. It doesn't help that I'm really sick right now, so I'm not doing much of anything right now. I thought since I slept through all my classes, I would go ahead and do something a little beneficial.

Anyway, again, check the store at dorm-gear.com, I'd appreciate it.

Stay Safe!

Quick Update

After a very long time of waiting, I finally put all my new products up on the store.

dorm-gear.com

Go to see all the new fun products I have up there.

Also working on an order and inventory/customer management database. Fun huh?

I'll update more later, just wanted to throw out a quick update before I go to bed.

If you're reading this on Facebook, you can see the full blog at dormroombiz.com