Welcome to ffxiv-knights-ivalice.org
Freebie Etiquette (Yes, There is Such a Thing!)
When you are on the hunt for free stuff, it can be easy to be so blinded by the offers that your manners go flying out the window completely. You may also just not realize that when it comes to taking advantage of freebies there is a general code of conduct that it pays to follow. While you are racking up the free stuff, keep these common courtesy rules in mind so that you are doing your part to keep the hunt for freebies fun and enjoyable.
Freebie etiquette rule number one is to remember that there is a face behind every freebie, no matter how distant it may seem. Since so many freebies come from websites and you don’t actually have interaction with a human being while you are getting them, it can be very easy to forget that someone (or very likely, a lot of someones) worked hard to bring you that website and that free deal. If you have a problem with a website or a form while trying to get some free stuff, deal with it as respectfully as you would if you had to approach a customer service rep in person. Leaving foul-mouthed posts on a message board or unloading a barrage of outrage on a customer reply form isn’t the way forward. Someone – a real person – will have to help you, and you’ll get a lot further by treating them with respect.
Respect is also the name of the game when it comes to rules attached for freebie offers. There are often restrictions in place for taking advantage of free offers, such as the age you have to be to cash in on the offer or how many offers per household can be taken. Sure, there are plenty of ways to get around these rules and “trick” a company into giving you an offer for which you are not really eligible. However, when you try to simply bleed out as many free offers as you can, you’re only making it hard on companies to be able to keep bringing these offers to you. If this freebie isn’t for you, take a back seat and make room for the folks who can take advantage of it. Your time will come.
Related to this last rule is the idea of not being too greedy when gobbling up the free stuff. Just because something is free doesn’t mean you should use a “smash and grab” approach and go for as much as you can get of anything you can get. Remember that there are a lot of other people out there who like to get in on the freebies, too, and think about how you would feel if you lost out on something you really wanted because someone came along and took them all. Don’t take more than your share of any free offer, and don’t take things you don’t want or need just because they’re free. Everyone loses when you do that.
Last but not least, if you have an opportunity to say thanks for a freebie, grab it. Of course, this can be hard to do when the free offers you are taking advantage of are found on the Internet, but there are still ways. Look for the customer comment field in the request forms you fill out to get your free stuff and leave a quick thank you there. You can also write a thank you on message boards and chat rooms that are associated with the freebie websites. The good will generated by your gratitude will only help convince companies that freebie offers are useful tools for reeling in the customers.
Free Blogging Resources to Save Money and Maximize Net Exposure Blogging is one of the new hot activities on the Internet. What is blogging might cross many peoples mind and to put that mind at ease, here a quick explanation s to what a blog is and what it does. A blog is a part of a web site or a website itself, where most commonly entries are displayed in reverse chronological order. It is a website where either news on certain subjects or personal entries can be made and then displayed and read by others. One important feature of many blogs is for readers to leave comments on the site. Currently there are more than 110 million blogs as per some of the blog tracker engines. Therefore blogs can be used for many different things; one of them might be to save money and to maximize net exposure. Many online web pages offer free web hosting space to people or offer a web blog that can be built into one’s own homepage. Blogs are a great tool to get feedback from friends, customers and anyone who visits the page. Blogs can help with net exposure due to the popularity of some blogs. There are two essential ways a blog can get popular and give one greater exposure. The one is the citation of the blog on certain major homepages visited by many, and the second is through affiliation. Whole blogging communities exist, where people almost chat with each other about certain topics. One can save money by using blogs that are offered for free or by actually boosting one’s own site on some of the popular blogs that allow such content in their text. Some of the blogs are used to post money saving tips on a regular base. These pages will post deals, finds and more in their blog for others to check out. These blogs are created and then added to by many. It is easy to find these blogs using one of the blogospheres. Blogoshperes, blog content search engines can help Internet users to find a blog with a content that they a re looking for. Major financial companies offer blogs for financial tips. This is a way to save money without having to have an own paid financial adviser, but the blog can act like one. Some of these financial blogs also offer help and assistance to people. It is a community of people that have had similar problems and where one can get help if necessary, Of course it is always dangerous to release too much information about oneself on the Internet, but when handled with caution, these blogs can be a great help for personal finances and for saving money. Blogs for saving money offer many categories. Some money saving tips on these blogs is about health care, baby products, student life, buying cars and more. These informative pages can help anyone who takes the time to read them save big bucks or even make money. Help is often given to people with these pages in the form of others that have experienced similar things, experts in the field or just general advice. Blogging is as easy as writing and e-mail and therefore can be done by anyone who has a working PC that is connected to the Internet. Blog generally offer an entry form and an option to read the entry before it is posted. There is also a way to respond to certain post by posting another blog entry. All the entries are generally public and available to anybody and therefore it is important to know that there are consequences and liability when writing blog entries. Even though some are anonymous, many blogs require the posters name. Finishing a Masterpiece and Getting it on the Shelves (how to get a book published) Writing a book is a monumental task in itself. The process is long, drawn out and grueling. Even if you thoroughly enjoy writing and writing on the same subject for an extended period of time, you will no doubt be exhausted by the writing of a book. Getting that book published, however, will take even more time and effort than producing the thing in the first place. Are you thinking about writing a book? Have you already written one and now are just wondering how to get a book published? If you are, read on. Here are a few tips on how to get from the starting line to triumphantly crossing the finish line. Writing that Book When starting out writing your book, before you are ready to consider how to get a book published, you may already feel daunted. To write a successful book you need to start out with some original thought. You probably have plenty of originality, but you may have trouble getting your ideas into a coherent flow of information that will be digestible by the general public. The first step is to create a book skeleton. You need to organize your thoughts into a progression of chapters. If your book will be non-fiction, start with a table of contents. Write chapter headings and sub-headings. You will automatically know that you’ll need an introductory chapter, but you should probably leave the content of your introduction for the last step. Organize your chapters so that they build upon one another. The more headings that you can brainstorm to begin with, the easier it will be to fill in your book with a series of short articles that flow into one another. If your writing will be fiction, you will need more of a storyboard. You will need to create cause and effect as well as character sketches. To make your story coherent your characters will need events to react to. Their reactions should become predictable as your readers get into the story. You may need to create some situations for your characters just for the purpose of introducing their traits to the reader. These are very general guidelines about how to begin constructing your book. The actual process will be much more involved as you move closer to finding out how to get a book published. Even after you are finished with the bulk of the content, your goal is still a ways off into the future. Getting to Print The next step in how to get a book published is finding a publisher. There are resources at your local library that will let you know who will be the best candidate for publishing the kind of writing that you do. After a series of queries and correspondence with the potential publishers you may get an invitation to send your manuscript. Then the work begins. A publisher is very experienced in finding books that are marketable. He knows what it will take to get your book to sell. Don’t be offended when his editors tears your writing apart. If they are doing that, you can enjoy the fact that you are on the road to a published book. Expect to enter into a close relationship of compromise and change with the editor as you rework and rework what you have already so painstakingly written. When you are finished you will have a readable and clean and correct manuscript ready for print. The road to getting a book published is a long one, but well worth the effort. Trust yourself, and trust the publisher to create a beautiful masterpiece. Don’t be discouraged if several publishers are not interested in your book. You may have to just keep the first few for yourself, and then again, they may eventually get accepted. Good luck and enjoy the process. |