Seniors Site

To kick-start the New Year, we are off to discussing one of my favorite subjects:  online store. Online stores are really simple in principle and it works both ways for sellers and consumers however, it can get really confusing setting up one since there are about thousands of “e-commerce gurus” out there claiming to have the “secret formula” to your online store success. We, seniors, should not be fooled by this. In truth, you really have to personally get down and dirty there, create your own methods and marketing tactics, study your market response, be known—all by yourself. No shortcuts, no tricks.

The advantage we, seniors, have over our younger contemporaries is that we have all the time in the world especially those who have already retired from work and of course, the kind of network we already have which we can use to work to our advantage. While this may sound “all-you” work, below is a simple step by step procedure on how to setup an online store:

RESEARCH

A background check—and a double check—just to make sure you got everything covered. The best way to enter the e-commerce arena and compete in it is to have a product which you sell in a wholesale price. That means, you should either be manufacturing the products yourself or you have a reliable supplier who marks his products down in half. You might want to check out few good domain names while you’re at it. Domain names are your website’s personal identification name. Good if you’ll be able to get your store’s name or you will have to settle with something really close to it.

SET UP

You’ll need a domain name, web host and a good CMS or content management system. Your domain name will help identify you apart from other websites while a web host is the backbone of your website since it allows other people to view your website. The CMS, on the other hand will make it easier for you to manage your website without getting too technical. All of which you have to pay either one time or monthly.

CONTENT

Put your content together. There should be pictures, product description and prices. To get an idea on how it should be, Google-search a couple of competitor sites and learn from their success. BE really observant of the way their clients interact with the seller as it might also be your key to success.

PAYMENT METHOD

This is the most important of them all. Ecommerce sites today are made more interactive and automated. Bear in mind that you are fighting for customers and you must give them the convenience they truly deserve. Your website should be able to accept payments without your customers having to wait for your email or response. Check with your CMS as most of them offers tie-ups with third party payment processors.

SHIPPING OPTIONS

Ecommerce sites run on shipping since orders can come from different parts of the world. It is important to have a reliable shipping company for your store’s needs. Get quotes from several local shippers and decide from there. You may have to get an account from shipping companies to qualify for discounts.

Your senior may not be aware yet of how a computer can change the way they live their lives or they are not ready for it just yet which will explain the resistance you are most likely to encounter when discussing a computer with a senior, especially those who never had any experience with it whatsoever. As a caregiver, you probably know how important a computer is to a household, let alone to a senior with physical and mental limitations. However, lack of education must be the root cause of this problem.

It is important for your senior to know the benefits of having a computer and learning how to use one. I personally encountered a senior who believes that a computer is only used for typing documents, like you would on a typewriter but in different fonts. Some who went a little farther than that will tell you that they are using the computer for the already-installed games in the system like Solitaire and Minesweeper. Surely you know a computer is much more than that!

To have your senior acquainted with a computer or allow you to have one near them, start by explaining that a computer is not only an entertainment device, it is more of a tool which can help them with their everyday lives and still keep a certain level of independence while doing so. With a computer, it is possible to play with it, work with it, even run a business with it without ever leaving their homes. Like any other tool, it needs someone to run it and to be able to run it, he or she will have to learn how.

At this point, your senior may be having some doubts since a computer can be so intimidating to a newbie. To alleviate their fears, it is important to point out that it’s okay to take it slow. Teach your senior how to surf the internet, and how to find educational videos if they need some help while you’re not around. Almost everything under the sun nowadays is documented on YouTube. Tell them that the more they get used to working with computers, the more they’ll discover its rewards.

One of the computer’s greatest gift is the ability to connect with people even to those who are far from where you are. To a senior, it means a lot as generally, they have a strong urge to stay connected with their family and loved ones. Let them discover the beauty of live video chats and social networking sites, but remind them about safety measures they have to practice in and around these sites.

Gone are the days when you go from one company to another just to apply for mobile and internet plans. Back then, these two come in separates. Two plans, two bills, two different services. For a person who works departmentalized, this is a good thing since you’ll be able to fix a thing without doing any changes on the other one. However, as technology advances, so does these plans and quite confusingly, the birth of techie lingo which complicates a senior’s mind.

Nonetheless, communication is important to seniors and although most of us hate changes, we’re forced to live with them. Knowing how to navigate your way through this will even save you pennies and at the same time, suit your needs perfectly. So, in an attempt to somehow lessen the burden, here is a handy guide for seniors who are looking for the right mobile and internet plans to use:

•    Bundles. Telecommunication companies are now offering services by the bundle. In a bundle, you are most likely to have a cable TV, internet connection and home phone line. With bundles, seniors will just have to pay one bill for all services, saving you time and energy when paying. You’ll notice too that you cut cost dramatically as compared to having 3 separate bills.
•    Don’t be fooled by “super fast, super big capacity” internet connection. Telecommunication companies are selling plans according to speed. While it is tempting to pay for the fastest one, notice the difference on how much you’ll be paying. In reality, you don’t have to pay for the fastest one, unless you plan to download movies and play hardcore online games all day long, since the cheapest one is reliable enough for your needs. You can upgrade any time anyway.
•    Go for VoIP and online calls. If you are to choose between a home phone and an internet connection, do get the latter as it can be used for calling home phones as well. VoIP or Voice Over Internet  Protocol is the newest technology created for making phone calls over the internet. For me it’s designed to replace your home phone whether they admit it or not! Not only VoIP calls are more convenient but also cheaper—you can even make calls for free!
•    Dialup, broadband or ADSL? If the internet connection will be used by multiple users within the area, you’re better off with an ADSL however, if there will be one computer terminal for an internet connection, your best bet would be a broadband. Throw dialup out the window, you won’t be needing this.
•    Mobile plan or just prepaid. Mobile phone companies are now offering phones that can be reloaded with credits when needed but can still be called when it doesn’t have one. These two have their own pros and cons. Choose the right one depending on your needs.

I’m not good at haggling but dangle a freebie in front of my face and I’m all yours! Well, I firmly believe that the best things in life are for free and if it doesn’t hurt anybody then why not? In this post, you’ll find my journey to satisfying my never ending craving for books. Not the buy-me-and-stack-me-at-one-corner-of-your-house-for-dust-to-eat-me kind. Now that I have my ebook reader with me, the next most logical question must be, “where to get those ebooks?”  In my case, I don’t need any more pushing; I surfed the internet for ebooks for free ones as well as paid ones seconds after I placed my order for the ebook reader itself!

First off, ebooks are electric books or digital books. Literally, they are books published in digital form to be read on computers and other digital devices. A device that is designed specifically for an ebook is an ebook reader. With an ebook reader, you can adjust font sizes as well as the brightness of the “pages” depending on your eyes’ preferences. Nonetheless, an ebook can be read using mobile phones that support certain types of format.

When looking for an ebook, make sure you are looking for the right format your ebook reader supports. Some of the most popular ones are .pdf, .html, .doc, .rtf, .txt, .mobi, .epub and .rgo. If you are using an Amazon Kindle, you should be looking for .azw format. To date, Apple and Android devices have the widest range of supported formats, in fact, the only formats they don’t support are .lrx and .wol.

So where to buy new ebooks to load up your E-readers? If you are a Kindle owner, of course you have to buy ebooks from Amazon. However, there are many ebooks you can find scattered around the internet to buy—even publishing houses are now selling digital copies over their website! All you need to do is take a peek inside your favorite book (the paper kind) and look for the publishing house’s website! For magazine collectors, magazine in digital format can also be uploaded to your E-Reader.

As mentioned earlier, not all ebooks are with tags. The beauty of having an E-Reader is you can download all the ebooks you want, paid and free! Free ebooks can also be found in legitimate sites such as Project Gutenberg. Ebooks here are classic ones such as Pride and Prejudice and Anne of Green Gables. These books were released for free because their copyright has already expired.

You might find newly released ebooks for free on P2P sites but you have to be very weary on downloading through them as it is illegal to do so. Aside from that, this is a popular way of transmitting viruses to a computer. You wouldn’t want to risk your computer’s health for just an ebook you can buy for a couple of dollars right?

First of all, internet apps are tools. The word “apps” stands for “tools”, in other words, when you say internet apps, you’re talking about internet tools. Tools that will help you make your computer days easier and enjoyable. Before we move on further, I would like to warn you that there are thousands, if not millions, of internet apps to date. Whether you’re using a Mac or running on Windows, a tech-savvy senior can indeed find useful internet apps to suit their needs—some are paid and others are for free.

However, no matter how good it sounds like, you don’t need them all. Plus, it is impossible to download them all as well. My advice is, stick with the popular ones and read reviews. Find out if it can do you more good than not since internet apps are not without glitches, especially free ones. Aside from that, you might want to practice safe downloading measures as some of them contain harmful viruses that can ruin your computer system—worst, a spyware which steals your personal info.

Like I said, it is important that when you look for an internet app, you must have an idea of what you want and need. Below are what I think will benefit seniors tremendously but safe enough to be downloaded or used.

•    Google Earth:  Planning to see the world without ever leaving your chair? Or perhaps experience running a plane via a flight simulator? Even better, watch the stars and celestial bodies realtime? All these things and more, you can do with Google Earth. Yes, there’s a free version.
•    Google Maps:  Stuck in the middle of nowhere during a supposedly fun road trip? Consult your Google Maps and you’ll be amazed how far it can take you with little planning! Basically, it works similarly to a GPS when installed to your mobile phone but it doesn’t require a receiver but you still need an internet connection, of course.
•    Skype:  Looking for ways to cut on your phone bills? Then download Skype! Everybody is on Skype, you just have to ask your friends’ and relatives’ Skype IDs, find them over Skype and add them to your contacts. Now you can talk with them for free! You can also use it to call landbased and mobile phones, of course you need to pay for those.
•    PayPal:  PayPal offers apps which you can access from your mobile phone, enabling you to send or transfer money from almost everywhere. PayPal is important for those who are planning to start their own online stores and even to those who loves shopping online as it doesn’t expose financial details on transactions.
•    Remember the Milk. I soooooo love this one as it keeps me in track. Basically it is a task manager. Think of it as your personal assistant reminding you of your priorities. It can also be integrated to popular online services such as Google calendar and Twitter.

By now, you must have guessed that I am a book lover. Yes, a bona fide bookworm, if you must call it that. As a kid, I used to scour newspapers for comic strips since I didn’t know how to read back then. As soon as I started to read, I often end up at libraries, borrowing books of any kind just to get me through the weekend. I started with big, easy-to-read letters then as I get older, the smaller the letters get. When my eyes started to fail, I got to a point when I bought a magnifying glass—small, of course—and that little clip-on book light so that the one sharing my bed could get his goodnight’s sleep while I read the lights away. Me, never had a problem falling asleep, books lull me to dreamland and it never failed, not even once.

One thing that bothers me though is the amount of dollars I spent on books and the unbelievable amount of space it commands of my home. I hate to see them go so naturally, they tend to accumulate overtime and take almost half of my home. That’s when the better half usually steps in and take them all to donation areas without me knowing it—and he’s been doing it since the day we got married.

So you could just imagine the joy I felt upon discovering ebooks and ebook readers. Let’s just say, it solved all my problems with paper books. No more magnifying glasses over reading glasses, no more clip-on lights and no more cluttering inside my home! Best of all, no partner nagging me to cleanup or else he will throw me out of the house! I still buy paper books every now and then since addiction is pretty much hard to treat but I must say—and say proudly—ebooks improved my reading habits tremendously.

So why switch to ebooks? Here are the benefits of ebooks vs. paper books:

•    Special discounts for seniors like me!
•    Very environment-friendly since it doesn’t require cutting of trees just to give you a decent printed paper.
•    Easier to keep. You can just buy a pen drive and store your ebook collection there, then have it uploaded and saved online for backups. Have someone to teach you if you are not too familiar with that.
•    Possibilities are endless. It’s so disappointing to visit a bookstore only to find that the book you are looking for is not available. Ebooks never run out of copies.
•    Ebooks are cheaper. Classic ones can even be legally downloaded from reputable sites.
•    Ebooks are very flexible. Their font sizes can be changed and their background colors adjusted. They can be customized according to your reading convenie

It’s amazing how the senior market responded to Apple’s latest product, the iPad. For those who have been living under a rock for quite some time now, iPad is basically a tablet PC, netbook and ebook reader rolled into one. If you’re to ask me, it’s like a smart phone (internet capability and all) but has bigger screen and a lot of ease of use. I really think that what got our group’s attention is iPad’s simplicity, no complex installation and configuration, no weird, color coded wires to stick into sockets just to have it up and running and best of all, we are no longer limited to ebook reading since we can also use iPad for surfing the net and checking our emails—something that is remotely possible with a simple ebook reader—but still at almost the same size.
Ebook readers were an instant hit then, enabling seniors to read with ease since they can adjust font sizes and look up words without having to reach for their dictionaries. For me, ebook readers have been a real space saver, since I am a packrat at heart. If you could just see my book collection amassed during pre-ebook reader era, I bet you would say I can put up my own bookstore and have it running without a supplier for a whole year! That’s how crazy things were during those times and if not for my partner threatening to sue me I wouldn’t have donated them to a local library!
So more or less you get the idea where I am coming from. My love for books and my eternal bond with the internet were enough to have me waiting in line for just a glimpse of the ever popular iPad. Men and women of different sizes and ages were there with me, patiently waiting and hoping to get our orders in. So, does it appeal to seniors? The answer will be a resounding YES.

Upon closer look, iPad has features that will definitely benefit seniors, even those who are not into internet stuff. Applications, for one, are enough to entertain seniors. There are health applications which prove to be valuable for seniors. This includes applications for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, blood pressure, health tracking plus a handy locator for those who are quite lost in finding the nearest pharmacy.

Having a hard time with your eyes? Don’t worry, iPad has an audio feature which basically reads whatever you touch within its screen, making it very easy for seniors with poor eyesight to create emails and send them to friends and relatives or do whatever they want with it. Of course, there are hundreds, if not thousands of audiobooks you can play with your iPad. Possibilities are indeed endless!

Seniors who are dabbling with the internet long enough to know that internet shopping is really the “in” thing nowadays must have experienced once or twice the joys of online payments. I must admit, the first time I experienced a successful online transaction, I was instantly hooked! From then on, I tried to resist the temptation of buying online. Just consider this:  prices are almost cut down in half, convenience in paying for these things, no need to go out and risk foot injury at the end of the day just by inspecting rows upon rows of stuff—most of them you don’t even need, and most of all, just wait for your parcel to be delivered right at your doorstep—no matter how big or small your item must be! I say, for a senior like me, online shopping is one of the most valuable things made possible by the internet–EVER!
So you could just imagine the excitement I felt when I discovered that my bank actually encouraged their members to pay bills online—and they are giving away rewards for doing so. E-payments are the next best thing that ever happened to seniors like me who are having a hard time ordering checks from a bank, mailing it to pay their bills as well as the cost that comes with it—that is, stamps, checks etc., then let’s not forget the risk of losing the check on its way to the billing company. All these can add stress to an already stressful senior life every month, whereas paying your bills online is as easy as few clicks on your keyboard!
If security is your problem, rest assured that most banking institutions are triple safe than your regular online shopping sites. However, just to stay on the safer side, here are some online bill payment practices you need to remember:

• Your password is the most crucial. You need to change them on a regular basis so that your account won’t risk being cracked by identity thieves. Try to do combinations of letters and numbers that are not in anyway connected to your personal information such as birthdays, anniversaries, and even names.
• Never pay your bills on public computers since you can never be sure if these computers are safe or if they are infected with malicious programs that can steal your bank information.
• Never respond to emails requesting for your information such as username and password. If your bank needs these things, they will wait for you until you personally access your account and will make you do updates while you are in the site itself.
• Make sure you are doing transactions with the right URL. FYI, URL is the address of a website located at the upper bar of your browser alongside reload, back and forward buttons. This usually starts with letters “http”. Consider this as your home address or the address of your bank for that matter. Payments should only be done within the bank’s premises.
• Always check your account balance so you can spot discrepancies at once. Report to your bank whenever you feel funny about something.

What I really , really love about computers, internet and indeed the world wide web is the ability to share valuable information without having to go out there and work your way against obstacles. I will tell you about the first time I fell inlove with the technology: back then, there’s no internet, just your simple desktop computer and few gigantic, impossible looking laptops. What amazed me was the convenient it had brought me while typing, saving my files and printing, not to mention a few selection of fonts you could play with.
Then came the internet. Although it was quite limited back then as compared to what internet has now become, still I considered it a breakthrough. I began emailing my friends, instead of writing them letters all the time—I still do that when I feel like it though. Now, I would like to call this phase as a “sharing era” when everything can be shared—and apparently, learned. There’s no limit now, you can find virtually everything over the internet. From your grandkid’s homework to your daughter’s Facebook to your neighbor’s famous apple pie recipe, they are all just a few clicks away. That’s not all, to top that, almost everything you can find over the internet is for free!
The latest trend however would be e-learning. For seniors who would like to learn something—anything—this late in their lives but are having a hard time figuring out how to go out of their houses and attend classes, e-learning is for you. E-learning usually doesn’t require anything for seniors to join. Some are conducted as formal classes where you listen to an instructor/teacher and throw questions at the end of each session. They can be in form of webminars—seminars that are conducted over the interent—or video recorded classes wherein you can view them anytime you want. Tests are also given to ensure you get the right feel and of course, to assess if you’re able to learn something from it. Tests are usually submitted through emails as well as correspondence between professors and students. Paid courses are usually credited and can be added to your resume, if need be. Some of the most popular courses are:  web animation, website design and web programming.
If you are interested in joining e-classes, there are some few things you need to get you started. First, you need a good internet connection—preferably fast enough for video and audio downloads—and a little know-how on clicking the play/stop/pause buttons. Seniors might also want to buy a separate USB stick to save files to as backup or to view them offline, although it is not required.

As much as there are seniors who might still be in the dark when it comes to Twitter—or any other social networking site for that matter—let’s not forget those who are already conducting their businesses online, and quite successful in doing so. If you’ve been in this arena for quite some time now, you know how Twitter can help you with your “branding” needs, and yes, it can be used for other purposes too, aside from just gathering friends and making your product known.
In Twitter, influence is important. In fact, IT IS more than important! Measuring your Twitter influence will help seniors know if they are doing fine in the Twitter community or if you are better off spending your time on other areas of your business. For one, keeping a Twitter account active can be time consuming and if you are not paying enough attention, you might find yourself in a dead-end. Your influence, like your own stat counter, gives you an idea where you might be lacking and what areas need some pushing.
·    Following-follower ratio. This is important. If you have a very disproportionate following-to-follower ratio, it does reflect bad practices you must be applying nowadays. Twitter requires certain amount of effort on your part, finding the right people and following them, but if a senior Twitterer starts following people (and I mean lots!) even outside of his or her market, they will only end up following a tad more people as compared to those who are following them. Doing this will make a senior look like a spammer, while having a high follower and low following ratio means you are interested in connecting with other people. Of course, having a higher number of followers indicates you have an influence there.
·    Number of lists under your name. Getting listed is one of the most important things you need to secure in Twitter as it indicates you are doing great in “branding” yourself. In other words, you are a great influence in your area and they know it.
·    Use Twitter tools. In truth, Twitter can be confusing, especially for us seniors. Good news is, there are about a hundred Twitter tools out there for you to use. What’s more, some of the good ones are for free! Just Google them using the search words “Twitter influence”.
·    Response to your tweets. This indicates you are getting enough attention with your tweets. If there is a healthy connection going on within your circle, you must be influential.