Tucker, PayPal buttons? Really?

I have a store where I sell my CD and my book. I have spynoh.bigcartel.com as a shopping cart and it has a Facebook app that allows people to shop in my fan page. Then on my site, my home base, the place where I can embrace my visitors and give them the full Tucker1 I had a link away to those other places. I sent people away from my blog. My music. My newsletter sign up. I sent them away. In my quest to give my potential customers a nice shopping cart experience I, instead, gave them the run around.

 I thought of my goal for the store

• sell my book and CD

I thought of my visitors goal for the store

• buy my book and CD

Noticing how neither of them include the phrase "really nice shopping cart experience" I went for the simple approach. I went to PayPal.com and mad some 'buy now' buttons. It wasn't to difficult to put them together because I only have two items at the moment (three if you include a bundle of the book and the CD).

Once I start putting out more products to buy I may need to look at a bigger shopping cart system. But at the moment what I have is just fine. It matches the design of the site, it's easy for a fan to use (a one click purchase path) and it runs on PayPal so it's basically free me. 

I thought I needed to be fancy but I made it complicated. These buttons are good enough and sometimes good enough is good enough.

Leave me a comment if you liked, or disagreed with, anything I talked about in today's article. 

1 I didn't mean for that to sound dirty. Sorry. 

Tucker, you do know that goals aren't tasks don't you?

Last week I not only recapped my entire last year of blogging in a single post, I told you how I had joined 60 other artists in a 9 week marketing and business skills challenge. Read it when you're done this week's post. 

My six month and twelve month goals.

My 6 month and 12 month goals for my music business

The first chapter of the challenge was on setting goals. Sounds simple right?

I kept writing out lists of things I needed to do: Write a blog post, Contact so and so, Stop looking at tech blogs and write a new song already etc. These are all things I need to do but they aren't places I need to be. They aren't final desitnation kind of things. 

I just kept writing and I wound up with a couple pages of tasks I needed to do. Then I started grouping them into common buckets and labeling them with what they pertained to: Grow Audience, Sell CDs, Sell Kids Book etc.

I still had a million things to do but they all fit into less than ten buckets. They felt way easier to deal with because the were working towards something (not just doing work).

I looked at my big buckets and asked myself “What do you think you can do with all of this in 6 months? In a year?” Then I wrote those down. If they didn't really fit with my bigger buckets I wrote it on my 'more than a year' list to be visited later. As an example I wrote down ‘Make a full length CD’. Since I’ve only just put out my EP it’s not really feasible for me to be writing or funding a new album project. 

Once I had my big goals I wrote them out pretty and hung them on my wall. Now every task I do, will be in support of those goals. 

Tasks: What you do to get to your goals. Goals: What you say you'll finally get done one day. 

If you'd like to know more about how I got to my goals just get in touch. Or if you'd just like keep up with how I'm doing with the challenge you can follow me on twitter, @SH_Tucker, or you can come join me at Facebook.com/SongsTuckerWrote

Tucker, are you asking for a challenge?

If you are one of my regular readers (I love every single both of you), then you may remember some of my posts where I was putting together my current philosophy on Getting To Done. 

These five articles are the mantras and phrases that have been helping me get to done: 

1. If you want to do something. You have to do something
2. Done is when you say you're done
3. Find the reason to say yes
4. Success is what you say it is
5. The story is as important as the song

I wanted to get better at networking and buildng an audience for my songs and stories. So, in the spirit of mantra #1, I have accepted the challenge set out by Ariel Hyatt and her book Music Success In Nine Weeks. The challenge is simple: Do each week's exercise and write about your experience each Monday. 

The first chapter is about setting goals so you can look forward to my retelling of the self torture I put myself through because goals I have some trouble with. Tasks I can list out for days. But goals? That's a different story. 

To keep up with how I'm doing with the challenge and meet some of the other artists taking part you can follow me on twitter, @SH_Tucker, or you can come join me at Facebook.com/SongsTuckerWrote 

Tucker, what's the status of your EP?

It's taken a while with a few starts and stops but I finally finished it and the CDs are scheduled to be pressed any time now. I bought a short run of CDs so I'll have a small inventory of discs but I also put my songs up for digital distribution so we'll see which sells out first.

The EP is called 'Born To The World', has five songs on it and the cover art is a photograph taken by a friend of mine1. The songs range from being written in the '90s to just months before recording. Most of this entries here at Songs Tucker Wrote are basically a process diary about how it all came together. 

I'm pretty excited because once the discs are in my hand it will be on my list of done. As I've mentioned several times here Done Is When You Say You're Done. Because it'll be considered done I'll be free to finish other projects like ... figuring out how to sell it.

I keep calling it my EP because it's not an album. Someone asked me what EP stands for, "Extended Play" I said. Then I chuckled as it's not really 'extended play' because it's shorter than an album. The term comes from back in the days when singles were king. An EP was usually longer songs or two songs per side of the vinyl record making it too long to be a single (SP) but too short to be a long playing record (LP). Today it just means around 5-7 songs 'cause the band was too broke/cheap to pay for a full album. 

You can also expect a post about how you'll be able to buy my EP so put $10 aside now so you'll have it handy when I come calling. 

1 - His name is Chris Ratzlaff and you can see some of his work at ChrisRatzlaff.com

Tucker, did you ever finish that EP you were recording?

Yes. I did. 

I once wrote an article about how I had finished recording my songs (last year). Following suit in how I finish projects (I don't), I just let them languish in the land of "one day". Recently I got tired of them being another in a long line of unfinished projects so I found the reason to say yes. I created the path to done. Because if you want to do something you have to do something and now the songs are finished. Are they perfect? Nope. There's no horn section and Celine wouldn't answer my emails requesting a duet. But sometimes good enough is good enough and now because done is when I say it's done, I have one more completed project under my belt. 

I do now, of course, have a bunch of other things I need to do in order to complete a different goal but those need their own path to done so I'm happy where I'm at. 

I need some help from my readers. Every single both of you. I need some people to listen to my songs and answer about 5 questions. It will really help me out and you get a sneak peak at this upcoming EP. 

If you are interested please contact me. 

You can get me on twitter @SH_Tucker or through the contact form. Or just email me if you know the address. Or call I suppose, I always have my phone with me. Of course if you have my phone number you could also txt me. Facebook has a messanger as well, if we're hooked up there you could get me. Or knock on my door. You could always send me a letter. Or just talk to me in person if you happen to see me. I think that about covers... Skype I forgot about Skype ... You could hand write a note and share the picture on Instagram (Instagram sounds like the funnest one to me :)