https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKP82VYpNLQ&feature=youtu.be
You’re wondering what the Hell to do now to make a living, and you’re hoping you can stay at home while doing that. Well, the answer’s very clear. Here’s my simple solution for the complex and difficult, almost insurmountable, marketing problems of today:
Build a ZOOM shop. I’ll show you how. I’m assuming that by now, everyone on the planet and a few Martians already has ZOOM on their system or in their cellphone, so let’s start from there.
Okay, go ahead and evoke ZOOM from your desktop, and … what? You don’t know how to make the little sign thingies go onto your desktop?
Oh, you don’t know what a desktop is. I get it. It’s all cellphones now. Okay, so be it — then figure out a way to get into ZOOM, and let’s take a look around, or you can wait for the ZOOMCLASS and … wait a minute. You have to be in the ZOOM class to hear how to get into the ZOOM class. There’s some faulty logic at work here.
Call or message or ask for help in the ashram or on the forum if you can’t figure it out up to at least the point where you can get into ZOOM okay.
Fine. Now then …
On the upper left of your ZOOM screen, you’ll note a sign that says “original sound OFF”. That’s wrong. You want to change that, and in a ZOOMSHOP class, I’ll explain exactly how to get the best sound out of your ZOOM settings.
With that having been done, left-click on “original sound OFF”. It should now say, “original sound ON”.
Now let’s look at your seller’s backdrop. You get that in your greenscreen settings in the “video” dropdown menu. Again, we’ll cover that in the class.
Okay, you now have your settings right, and you’re going to select the exactly right backdrop for your product or items.
Some are photographic, like the art gallery. Others will have been created in the GoDD™ Environment, and others will have been produced in the Prosperity Virtual Ashram we have established in Second Life and, yes, you are welcome there — you have but to ask.
ZOOMSHOP GreenScreens
I’ve already sent 40 greenscreen ZOOMSHOP ART & JEWELRY GALLERY backgrounds for you to use. Surely one of them will be exactly right.
- ART GALLERY — This is a set of art gallery backgrounds from various shops we actually ran successfully in the days B.C. — Before Covid.
- BUCK’S BOOKS — The Ultimate Bookshop – Library, with over 20,000 rare antiquarian books piled high on polished hardwood shelving, absolutely everywhere, books stacked on the floor, books, books, books!!! A perfect place from which to sell a book or two.
- ANCIENT ROME — If you want ancient Rome, you can get it, both exterior and interior locations, with our fabulous Armana buildings in the Ashram.
- ANCIENT EGYPT — Ready for use, this set of absolutely stunning Egyptian exteriors and interiors will astound you with its richness and glory. What a great place from which to peddle your wares! What better setting than an ancient temple, crammed with goodies for sale? Set out your carpet in the Temple of Seti II, and watch your sales go up and up!
- ANCIENT MAYA — This is the ultimate sales spot for your creative talents. Imagine your handcrafts and jewelry items being offered IN PERSON by you to your customer, and you’re doing business right there, in the middle o f a Mayan Observatory!
- URBAN WORLDWIDE PLUS — This is a set of interior backdrops in a Second Life setting, where you have your choice of many of the world’s most famous cities outside your window. You can originate from just about anywhere, including the Mars Colony!
- DOWNTOWN BARDOTOWN — A carefully constructed set of BardoTown backgrounds, both exterior and interior, with lots of different types of shops — even a beauty salon and an opera house!
- NORTON STREET — Actually, you get a whole set of important landmarks in the GoDD™ Environment version of BardoTown, including COSMO STREET and GEMINI. Imagine conducting business or originating a teaching class from your new home in the Causal Plane!
Animated GreenScreen Backdrops
These are a bit tougher to produce. They have to be circular, which means that if there are clouds rolling across the sky, I have to keep recording until they’re more or less similar and in the same position as when they started.
It’s the same with any fountains, river, stream, waterfalls, lakes or endless ocean that are visible in the scene. In addition, I have to beware of gliches and timing issues, sensitive to daytime lighting and much, much more. It’s a bear of a job, but worth every second of the effort, to produce these immersive and fully credible environments. Selling “Merch”, which is the new name for merchandise, is easy with these backgrounds.
- EGYPTIAN PALACES & TEMPLES — A set of stunning Egyptian interiors and exteriors with moving clouds, flickering torches, water features and more.
- ROMAN PALACES & BATHS — Everything from the Baths of Diocletian to the Temple of Jupiter, the whole range of the Roman Forum comes to life for you, with water features galore, tons of flaming torches and waving banners. Included are interiors and exteriors typical of ordinary Roman homes. A street market is one of the stronger backdrops that you will find of use, particularly if you sell Ancient Roman coins.
- SNOW VILLAGE — It need not be Christmas to appear in Snow Village. You’re sitting in a Pizza shop, with a river, several small boats, strings of blinking lights, and of course a gently-falling snow.
- ENCHANTED GARDEN — An enchanted garden of the East, lots of water features, moving branches, swaying leaves and moving clouds.
- DANCE CLUB — Your own RAVE environment. Party on, dudes.
- AIRCRAFT CARRIER U.S.S. ENTERPRISE — You’re on the deck, with waves all around the ship, Corsairs warming up on-deck, smoke billowing out of the stack, clouds rolling across the sky! What a great place for a small boutique or a tarot reading with the latest romantic advice.
- HAUNTED GARDEN — A beautiful animation background that gives a definite flavor to any lecture or class event you’d care to put on there.
- MED CENTER — This is the Med Spiritual Healing Center you remember from the early ashram days, back to serve you in a ZOOM environment. You can meet here for readings and prayer — of course, the Ashram is also available 24/7 for healings and passage readings.
- OVAL OFFICE — A leftover from the Trump Regime, this is the Oval Office where we sat to impart enlightenment to Donald Trump & his Minions. In spite of the fact that it clearly had no effect, I wouldn’t worry — apparently Trump is Immune All, so it wouldn’t have mattered where we met for our afternoon prayers and supplications.
There are more animated backdrops coming your way. You can suggest backdrops, and I’ll see if I have the materials to make them for you.
My thought is that you’ll want mostly interiors — exteriors are sort of unlikely, except that people are getting more and more used to seeing city exteriors behind desk anchors that seem to show them dangling outside the White House, or just above Times Square.
It’s easy enough to get exteriors of modern cities, towns, villages and hamlets, but it isn’t so easy to get moving backgrounds of ancient place, and that’s what I can do, and am doing right now.
In fact, I’m still shooting Christmas backdrops, even as we near the 2020th Noel — the first is the only one we sing about, but that will probably change.
One of the clear advantages of GreenScreen backdrops is that you are no longer bound to the location of your broadcast station.
In short, you can appear anywhere you like, even in another universe or reality structure, like the one I’m building and shooting tonight.
I have a space station, but the interiors are boringly similar, so I’ll be looking for a great starship interior somewhere on the Second Life Marketplace — I use your donations from the temple and other SL spots for the purpose, and so far, it’s worked out well.
One of the issues with the Egyptian settings is the lack of furniture. It’s not that I don’t have any ancient Egyptian furniture — I do, but they didn’t use much, and didn’t stick it everywhere, like we do. Well, at least the people in the Sharper Image catalog do.
Of course, you can easily do the same, using the safe and friendly environment of the virtual ashram to do so — fly around, take some shots and try them as backgrounds.
You’ll soon see why it took me the better part of three months to create this short list of impressive and useful marketing backgrounds and GreenScreen tools.
I present the various tools at our LIVE ZOOMSHOP CLASSES.
If you can’t get online, don’t worry. You’re apparently the only one remaining who can’t, and help is almost certainly on the way.
More Than Merch
You know, you can do a whole lot more with Buck’s Books than merely sell a book. You can read a book, perform a play with ZOOM friends, discuss books, read your poetry, and more.
Same with the theater — it could be a very good setting within which to discuss films and film-making, history of cinema and much, much more.
How about a restaurant for a setting in which you give cooking hints? Not the kind of thing you’d put on at your kitchen range and countertops. What I mean is the textbook stuff about cooking, things you don’t ordinarily acquire unless you’re a professional chef.
Again, there’s the Magical Gardens, from which you could originate a show about gardening. Just one show on how to fail to grow things could be a jackpot winner.
There’s even an opportunity for an expedition into the Ancient World, with my “Aegean Islands Tour” which takes in all the most famous islands of Ancient Greece. There’s also a Mainland tour of Athens and surrounding environs, but that’s a little esoteric for the average merchant peddler, but maybe you’re not average.
If, on the other hand, you do happen to be one of those average bears, there’s still hope for you — how about storytelling in the world next door?
I’ll be making a number of so-called “fantasy world” backgrounds, and the more clamor I get for them, the faster I’ll get them out there for you.
I’m planning a great collection of animated Kingdom of Heaven backgrounds, and there will of course be cloud effects and water features, but not a lot of fire. It’s friggin’ cold up there some days, but you gotta wear them stupid “albs” all the time.
It’s like being a patient in a hospital ward, with the wind whistling up your butt the whole time, and if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, “I hate paper shoes.”
If you pace constantly, they wear out in about 29 minutes. I’ve timed it throughout the decades, and it always comes out the same. Paper shoes suck.
As a matter of fact, the shoes you’re wearing now are probably at least partly made out of paper and, no, I’m not kidding — fact check me on this.
Put some runners into the washing machine, like you did with sneakers, and see what happens. You’ll have a handful of paper-mache and shoe-putty — that’s what will happen.
If you’re selling art, you want the gallery background that most matches what you’re selling. If nothing does, send me some photos of your artwork, and I’ll try to match it with a background, but if nothing does match it, I might not be able to come up with anything, so be prepared, be braced for disappointment.
No matter what happens, it’s not as bad as losing a national election. I hate that, so I never run, and I suggest you do the same — keeps you out of trouble.
Oh, anyone here in need of a Presidential Pardon? I heard tell there’s a run on them, and they’re at a bargain price today! Maybe a Midnight Madness Sale at the White House?
So there are a bunch of things you can do in the commercial merchant environment, but you can also use it for lectures, classes and demonstrations.
How do you show things close-up? Use a second camera and put it into ZOOM as a second avatar, see?
Use the audio from your main source, no audio on the picture camera. Be careful how you set up the audio — this is where things can go dreadfully rongw.
So how about other uses for the backgrounds? What new ideas can YOU come up with? Would you like to share those new ideas? That’s why we have ZOOMSHOP classes, workshops and clinics.
If you’d like to join our merry group of merch marketers on ZOOM, let us know, and we’ll arrange to have YOU in our ZOOMSHOP for one hour.
If you like it, you can choose your day or days and hour or hours to be the LIVE shopkeeper.
Of course some times are already scheduled but you can try, and hope it’s not already reserved, or set up your very own ZOOMSHOP — I’ll tell you how to do this at the workshop.
What workshop?
Why, the very next workshop, that’s what workshop. This is a very powerful use of the emotional centrum for the benefit of others, being at-service, and is a great emotional centrum builder-upper.
I guess that’s what you’d call an Emotional Body Builder, yes? Well, I certainly would. You could organize your own classes, workshops and clinics and hold them in a shared environment, simply by telling folks where to download the backgrounds and which ones they want for your class or meeting space.
Then everyone has the same background, see? It makes a better contact, a more powerful connection, and that’s the whole point. It puts you all in the same world at the same time.
Synchronicity is the key.
Of course, a key does you no good unless you are presented with the corresponding lock. That’s why you attend workshops, to get the workarounds, the secret tricks, and of course the professional hacks.
Forget it, let’s just start with the simplest of backgrounds and go from there, shall we? I recommend the Gallery Group as a starter, but it’s entirely up to you.
Animated backgrounds can be distracting. You have to know before you go public that it isn’t going to louse you up to have that smoke billowing up from that stack behind you.
If flickering torches take your customer’s eyes away from the merch, it isn’t working. Change the background until you find one that works PERFECTLY for your current purpose, and then change it when something different is clearly needed.
Don’t get stuck loving one background. Change them once in a while or often, as you see fit. I like to use whatever suits the marketing at the moment, meaning I use the background that matches the merchandise — the punishment fits the crime.
Well, what I mean is, it works.
Okay, so how to get started? First of all, you need to decide to start. Only then can you actually hope to start.
But start what, exactly?
Well, you may have the temperament for selling, maybe not — but you certainly have talents in one or more of the other areas that could be called into play here.
For instance, you can run a class, a workshop or an entire online academy from your apparent virtual environment.
It helps to set the mood, and that’s no small item in the course of things. You need to have some idea of something you could share with others, and if you don’t, you desperately need one of my ZOOMSHOP workshops.
Even reading my blogs on the subject would help a little. Try some scalding hot chicken soup???
See You At The Top!!!
gorby