Today, a client has requested, out of the blue, a refund for copy­writ­ing work per­formed last year. Yes, last year!

Can you believe it?

Over seven months have passed and this one client is ask­ing for his money back. His excuse? “I need the money.” Of course, I refused. But he sounded des­per­ate, so I pre­sume he won’t be happy with my decision.

Likely, he will pull tooth and nail to make his case, likely by high­light­ing all the neg­a­tives, warts, and things he doesn’t like as to jus­tify his case.

The thing is, while the client did not hide the fact that he’s strapped for cash, we had an agree­ment. I can sym­pa­thize, but why should that be my responsibility?

As Larry Winget often says, “A deal is a deal.”

I ask for 100% of the fee upfront. No excep­tions. I work hard enough as it is to mar­ket my ser­vices, find clients, and then write copy for my clients. Why would I want to work twice or three times as much just to get and/​or keep my money?

Even though there’s an agree­ment in place, which states that I give no refunds but do offer a 30-​​day revi­sion period for rewrites, it still irks me on a num­ber of levels.

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I often get requests from peo­ple ask­ing me what plu­g­ins do I use on this blog. Or, what are my favorite plu­g­ins. Some­times, I post about them. But these lists usu­ally become stale fast, because I test new plu­g­ins and change them all the time.

So I wanted to post an update and list some of my favorite plu­g­ins. How­ever, it was cum­ber­some to pick and choose which ones I wanted to post about because there are so many. So I’ve decided to do some­thing dif­fer­ent this year.

Using a plu­gin that lists all the plu­g­ins in use on a par­tic­u­lar blog (I’ll share that one with you in a moment), I man­aged to print a list of all my plu­g­ins in a sin­gle post.

How­ever, the descrip­tions you will read are those of the plu­gin authors. Some of them are poor and insuf­fi­cient. Oth­ers don’t explain how I use them specif­i­cally on this blog.

So I’ve also added a mini-​​description with addi­tional com­ments to each plu­gin to explain why, how, or where I’ve used it on this blog. I sin­cerely hope this list is use­ful to you. If it is, con­sider it a Christ­mas gift from me.

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You’ve prob­a­bly heard the quote from Calvin Coolidge: “Noth­ing in this world can take the place of per­sis­tence.” Well, today, I learned about some­one I already know and admire, who cer­tainly embod­ies this trait.

Her name is Ladan Lashkari. She is a reader of this blog, and she even listed it as being one of her favorites. But when I learned her story, I was truly hum­bled.

The story was writ­ten by Eric Holm­lund. His blog, “Eric’s Tips,” is another blog I highly rec­om­mend. As you shall soon find out, he wrote a piece that’s so amaz­ing and inspi­ra­tional, that I had to tell you about it, with Eric’s gra­cious per­mis­sion. (And once you read it, you’ll be amazed like I am by how pow­er­ful Ladan’s story really is.)

If you think you have lim­i­ta­tions in your life stop­ping you from achiev­ing suc­cess, take some time to read about this woman’s lim­i­ta­tions. Her story is not only cap­ti­vat­ing, it’s awe-​​inspiring in so many ways.

So with­out fur­ther ado…

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Some peo­ple have asked what Web 2.0 tools do I use. Now, that ques­tion is two-​​sided. One is, what tools do I use with my copy? And the answer is, “not many.” I do use a few, and I’m test­ing a lot more, too.

Other than video and graph­ics, such as using YouTube​.com and Flickr​.com, which are the most pop­u­lar but not really impor­tant when you have your own ded­i­cated server like I do, there are some tools to allow my web­sites to be a lit­tle more interactive.

(If you remem­ber from my report, The Death of The Saleslet­ter,” I talk about the rise in “sam­pli­fi­ca­tion.” If there are any tools that I would pre­fer, other than video and audio, they would cer­tainly be those that helped to give my read­ers more proof, and to make their buy­ing expe­ri­ences eas­ier and more secure.)

I will blog about those once I get more sta­tis­tics to share with you.

But the sec­ond part of that ques­tion is, when it comes to run­ning my busi­ness, there are a few Web 2.0 tools and ser­vices that have helped my life quite tremen­dously. Here’s a list of some of them.

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Nowa­days, it’s no longer a choice between the A and B piles. It’s no longer a choice between hun­dreds of sta­tions or chan­nels. It’s a choice between mil­lions if not bil­lions of options called “websites.”

But there’s some­thing else.

The Inter­net has mul­ti­plied not only the num­ber of options but also the num­ber of choices, too! (If you want a hint, think of those choices as “applications.”)

From mil­lions of web pages (as opposed to just hun­dreds of direct mail pieces, TV chan­nels or radio sta­tions), to var­i­ous deliv­ery meth­ods for each one (e.g., text, audio and video), to addi­tional appli­ca­tions that equally demand atten­tion (on the web as well as on a com­puter desk­top), a user’s choices have there­fore become expo­nen­tially more complex.

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I have a chal­lenge, and I won­der if you have the anwswer — or can sim­ply direct me to where I can find it.

As many of you know, I have a mem­ber­ship site at The Copy Doc­tor, and use another soft­ware as a CMS (which is less than desirable).

The folks that sup­port the CMS are great guys and all, but I’ve have so many prob­lems with them — they’re slow, and their empty promises are start­ing to get the best of me… and my paid mem­bers, to say the least.

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