Apr 092018
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

Ecommerce Case Studies / Success / Examples

  1. The base premise is that the more people see your products, the better your chances of making a sale.

  2. You can do that by encouraging more people to visit your website via SEO and SMM,
    or,
    You can go where the crowds are

  3. Both are good strategies and you can deploy both simultaneously. However; SEO and SMM takes time to implement and start generating traffic.

  4. We adopted the second strategy, that is, go where the crowds are, that is, online malls or marketplaces Amazon, eBay, Walmart.

  5. Steps:

    1. Prepare your data. SKUs, UPC codes, shipping weights, dimensions, lag times, Free or Paid shipping, T&C

    2. Compare your pricing to those of competitors.

    3. Start Listing

    4. Start with a few products, get your feet wet.

    5. List accurately, ship quickly, do your best to get 5 Star ratings

    6. When you are ready to list in bulk, use tools like:

      1. http://multifeedinventory.com

      2. http://uploadmyproducts.com

    7. Sign up for eBay‘s Global Shipping Program

    8. List on Amazon.ca and Amazon.mx

    9. Without increasing or broadening your product line, you can significantly increase your sales by simply getting in front of more people.

Good Luck!


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Mar 042018
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

  1. Ecommerce presents a whole world of potential customers. It can be very lucrative.
  2. You should sell on Marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, Walmart and others to further enhance your earning potential.
  3. Just like good people, there are bad people who are lurking to take advantage of weaknesses in the system.
  4. You will face fraud – sooner or later. In fact you will often face fraud.
  5. While you must take all the precautions that are suggested by your bank and payment processor like PayPal etc., you will still get defrauded.
  6. If you get a massive hit, you may not be able to recover from that.
  7. How to avoid that?
    1. Figure out how much of a risk you can handle. That is a figure that may hurt you but not run you out of business.
    2. Let’s say that figure is $2,500
    3. On your own website, manually process such orders. Ask the customers to send a wire transfer or certified check before you will ship.
    4. On Marketplaces, it is harder to control. If you get orders for large ticket items and then keep canceling them, marketplaces would lower your rating. Also, if on a marketplace if you ask a customer to send a wire transfer, the marketplace will suspend you because they think you are circumventing their commission.
    5. We use a service called http://uploadmyproducts.com to block products that are over our risk threshold, in this example $2,500. We get data feeds from distributors all day long but we don’t have to worry. We setup once and the software keeps blocking such high ticket items from being listed on marketplaces.
    6. Do we lose some business this way? Certainly. But we minimize the risk of being brought to our knees by fraud.
    7. Helps us manage risk for our long term survival and success.

Ecommerce can be very lucrative. However; you must protect yourself and don’t take a risk that you cannot recover from.

Good Luck!


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Mar 032018
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

  1. Marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, Walmart are big – you are not
  2. Companies with trademarks to protect are also generally big and have lawyers – you don’t
  3. Marketplaces have their own rules – whether you like them or not, you have to play by their rules
  4. If they don’t want you to sell what they consider weapons, don’t. You may think it is a small knife but if they think it is a weapon, they are right, you are not.
  5. If they don’t want you to sell what looks like a confederate flag, don’t.
  6. If they restrict your account or close it – you can be in serious financial trouble.
  7. Avoid the wrath of marketplaces and save your account
  8. Block what needs to be blocked for a specific marketplace – why lose all sales
  9. Use a service like UploadMyProducts.com to block based on:
    1. Distributor
    2. Manufacturer
    3. Category
    4. Product:
      1. Title
      2. SKU
      3. GTIN
    5. Keyword

Play it safe, stay within the rules and maximize your chances of success.

Good Luck!


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Feb 252018
 

Practical Genius – The Real Smarts You need to Get Your Talents and Passions Working for You.
I picked up this book at the library, yes, I still like going to the library and I also like reading the foreword. As I started reading the foreword intrigued me. It is by Kevin Carroll and I liked it so much, I took pictures of it and am uploading them here. I think we can all learn from it.

Business books

Foreword by Kevin Carroll – a

Business Books to read

Foreword by Kevin Carroll – b

Business Books to read

Foreword by Kevin Carroll – c

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Feb 212018
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

  1. Saves you time and time is money especially if you have hundreds and thousands of products
  2. Synchronize inventory several times a day
  3. Avoids order cancellations & negative feedback
  4. Avoid the wrath of marketplaces and save your account
  5. Send only selected products to certain marketplaces
  6. Block products that may be disallowed on certain marketplaces
  7. Set separate prices for marketplaces
  8. Set margins based on price tiers
  9. Allocate for shipping based on weight tiers

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Dec 222017
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

By BloggerKhan

Posted in | Tags : , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every article you read and every TV news channel you watch is talking about the growth in ecommerce, not just in the USA but all over the world. Traditional malls and standalone stores are feeling the pressure and they should as a good portion of sales has moved online. The smart ones leveraged technology to have a strong online presence and have integrated their physical stores with their ecommerce website in such a way that they complement each other instead of cannibalizing each other.

‘Online only’ merchants do not have the luxury of such complementing physical stores to draw crowds from. That is a real problem. Savvy merchants know that the more people see their products, the better their chances of making a sale. The online versions of physical / traditional malls are called online marketplaces and the big ones are eBay, Amazon, Walmart and to a lesser extent Etsy. Merchants sell on their own ecommerce websites but also upload their products to these marketplaces.

People who prefer to shop on eBay go to eBay, Amazon loyalists go to Amazon and so on. There they see the merchant’s products and order via the marketplace. The merchant makes a sale, the marketplace a commission.

Why would merchants want to sell on marketplaces when they know the marketplace is going to charge a hefty commission? Because they get a customer that they wouldn’t otherwise. And now that they have made a customer, they can entice him to buy directly from their website in the future and save them marketplace commissions.

This establishes the benefits of selling on marketplaces. Now lets look at the challenges of selling on marketplaces.

  1. Labor intensive: To keep your own website updated and have accurate product information is quite challenging. To do so on multiple marketplaces in addition is a 5 Advil headache.

  2. GTIN / UPC codes: Amazon and Walmart insists on all products to have UPC codes. If you make your own products or source from smaller manufacturers, you don’t have UPC codes. You have to buy them, add them to your product descriptions and only then you can upload. That is labor intensive and it costs money.

  3. Synchronizing inventory: This is probably the biggest headache of selling products on 3rd party marketplaces. Every time somebody buys off of your website or on eBay or Amazon or any other marketplace, you have to update stock on all of them. If you don’t, then you may be sold out on an item but somebody may buy the same on one or more of the other marketplaces. Now what do you do? You have no stock. You cancel the orders and refund but that results in negative feedback and the marketplace lowers your ratings. Do it often and your account will get suspended. Marketplaces compete with each other and they are all trying to make the customer experience a pleasant one. If you are standing in the way, they will swat you like a fly.

    Human beings are always looking at solving problems though and a SaaS product called UMP ( short for UploadMyProducts.com ) now solves the inventory problem. What UMP does is, it Pulls the product data from your website / ecommerce site to it’s own database and then Pushes it to all marketplaces several times a day. This keeps stock levels updated on all platforms and minimizes the changes of you selling something that you don’t have stock on.

    Upload my products to amazon, ebay, walmart, etsy.

    Upload products to amazon, ebay, walmart, etsy and synchronize inventory

  4. Pricing: Setting different prices on different marketplaces: Commissions vary and so does shipping costs. If Walmart insists that you offer free shipping, what do you do. You have to markup your prices but only for Walmart. How do you do that if you have thousands of products? Again UMP comes to the rescue. It allows you to set different prices for different marketplaces.

  5. Blocking products: Some marketplaces don’t allow the sale of certain products, for example, certain kinds of knives or guns. If you violate their rules, your account may get shut down. What do you do? Through UMP ( UploadMyProducts.com ), you can block certain products for some marketplaces while allow them on others.

  6. Shipping policies: This is something that the smart merchants embrace and the dumb ones ignore. I cannot fathom why some merchants proudly proclaim “We only ship to the lower 48 states. No exceptions”. In this day and age you don’t want to ship overseas? Why not? You can’t figure out how to calculate shipping costs?

    Ebay has the best solutions for International shipping and UMP integrates with that. Many merchants see 20 to 25% of their sales coming from International Sales.

    You’ve got to realize that the US Market is a lot cheaper than many parts of the world and also, being a bigger market, there are many more choices that may not be available in other countries. That’s why international customers buy from US companies who are willing to ship overseas. Wake up people! If you don’t know how to enable international shipping, talk to ecommerce specialists like InterloperInc.com and they will help you get setup for international shipping.

In conclusion, ecommerce, like any other business platform, has it’s headaches and it’s challenges. That does not mean you give up. Look around and find solutions. Talk to companies that specialize in ecommerce and let them help you out. Ecommerce indeed is booming. Go get your share!

How to quickly setup an online store

Click or Call for help with ecommerce

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Dec 162017
 

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Dec 162017
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

If you do not have an online business, chances are you may not have ever heard of the term drop shipping. In this article, we will try to explain what it is and how it can make your life and running your business easier. We encourage you to read on, especially if you are about to start your own business or are looking into expanding online.

Drop shipping refers to shipping directly to your customers from a vendor with no intermediaries in between. As you can tell, this is a complete opposite to the traditional model where you buy and store the products in a physical location. Once, they’re sold, you ship them yourself. With drop shipping, once a customer orders from you, you pass the info along to your drop shipper who, in turn, packages and ships them directly to the customer.

The biggest benefit is obvious, that you do not have to keep any inventory yourself. You free up both your time and resources, have a wide selection of products, you are not limited by the location of your business and your customers will receive their orders on time. It also promotes scalability which is a huge perk. On the flip side, your margins are a little slimmer as the drop shipper charges for his services.

In addition to scalability, reduced risk is another major advantage of drop shipping. In a conventional model, you buy in bulk, store the inventory and then sell over time. If you make a bad decision and the market changes on you, you can be stuck with unsold inventory. That can be devastating. Drop shipping helps you lower your risk and to pay for that reduced risk, you have reduced profit margins.

So, now that we have established that drop shipping is a good idea, the next question is where can you find them. A simple Google search can be helpful, but make sure you expand your search terms by using drop shipping vocabulary such as wholesaler, distributor, etc. Contacting your manufacturer may be also worth a shot as they may be collaborating with a particular drop shipper already. This will be as good of a recommendation as it can get.

The drop shipping model in ecommerce

The drop shipping model in ecommerce

Before making a decision, which drop shipper to use, ask yourself a few questions, See what products they provide, at what cost, what shipping and payment options they offer, what is their return policy, etc. Do they offer any branding recommendations and send email notifications with order status and tracking? During the research process, it may definitely be worth your time to check any reviews and references they have received from their customers online.

Let us take a look at two of the most popular Chinese websites, Alibaba and AliExpress. Alibaba has a wholesale, business to business model, requires minimum order quantities and sometimes the goods are manufactured after your order. So, it may take up to several months from order till delivery. On the other hand, AliExpress works as a retailer, with a business to customer model, it allows the purchase of single units and the products have already been manufactured so shipping is done in a more timely manner. Alibaba is a platform that sells in bulk, that is, the sellers on Alibaba sell in bulk. They are either manufacturers or wholesalers / distributors. AliExpress is a platform for retailers though it also has some drop shippers / wholesalers who give you bulk pricing if you are a bulk buyer.

Then there are drop shipping aggregators who serve as the middleman between drop shippers and ecommerce merchants making it easy for both parties to further their business. Here are a few drop shipping aggregators: Oberlo – importing from AliExpress and other Chinese manufacturers; Doba – they interface with both manufacturers and wholesalers; WholeSale Central – an aggregator with a decent tool for filtering through categories like apparel, electronics and leather goods; Dropship Direct – another significant aggregator.

How can you integrate them with your ecommerce system?

To integrate the drop shipper with your ecommerce platform / online store, contact a web development company like InterloperInc.com that specializes in ecommerce. They have several years worth of experience with both ecommerce development and drop shipping and work professionally and in a timely manner to meet the business’s needs.

Once you have all these streams of product data flowing into your ecommerce system, you may also consider uploading your inventory to marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Sears, Rakuten etc. To upload and synchronize inventory, you may use services like UploadMyProducts.com to make life easier for you.

All these services are there to help you make buying, selling and processing orders easier. Your focus then has to be on generating traffic to your website, servicing customers and doing research on what product mix to carry.

We hope this article was helpful. Good luck!

Ecommerce Drop Shipping Experts

Ecommerce Drop Shipping Experts

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Dec 122017
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

Competing with the big guys in the industry isn’t easy, especially when it comes to ecommerce as they have bigger budgets to spend on promotion and marketing. However, this doesn’t mean that the world of online marketing is closed to smaller players. There are plenty of ways to stay one step ahead of big businesses. This article will focus on category descriptions.

Most ecommerce websites have their products identified by categories to make it easier for customers and themselves when doing search and filter. Big brands do not have a lot of text on their category pages, but rather go for a more clean look and let the products speak for themselves. They can do this because they do not need long category descriptions for SEO juice as they are already visible to their customers and can afford to advertise. You are small, you cannot spend much on advertising. So you have to be smarter and use search engines are your allies. You can use more descriptive text at the top of your categories to get better ranking on search engines and attract customers that way. See example picture.

Write category descriptions that contain relevant long-tail keywords as the short ones are extremely competitive. Write them in a way that shows your customers that you really understand what this category is about, what kind of products and what kind of situations this category is suitable for. Tell a story if you can.

Add internal links to subcategories to establish a site hierarchy. Search engines will crawl through these, index them and help you rank higher in search results. Not only that, but internal linking also improves site navigation and prompts visitors to view more pages and spend more time on the website.

It’s very important to update descriptions on a regular basis especially if your inventory changes.

Last but not least, don’t be afraid to add other types of media to your descriptions. Recent polls have shown that users absolutely love videos. If you have the time and resources available, make short videos showing the product in use.

We hope this article was helpful.

Good luck!


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Dec 102017
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

Compared to PPC (Pay Per Click Ads) organic search has long lasting effects. If you develop good content, it may continue to show up in searches years from now. What is good content though? Good content is not necessarily academic content. It’s content that covers a topic or sub-topic to be sufficiently informative and engaging, easy to read and understand and keyword rich for a favorable ranking in searches. It should also be relevant to your business or line of operations as after all you want to attract bees, not wasps.

Content can be developed in one of two ways:

  • In-house:
    Larger organizations have whole departments writing content for their marketing collateral, websites and blogs. Small businesses don’t have that luxury. Most small businesses now understand the benefits of content development but don’t have the skills to write or have the skills but don’t have the time to spare 2 to 3 hours a day writing content and then promoting it.

  • Outsourcing:
    Small businesses should consider outsourcing content development to engage their user base and also for SEO benefits. The cost of outsourcing is not that high and most small businesses can afford to get their content outsourced.

The next logical question is who to outsource to? Now, this part may prove to be tricky and somewhat time-consuming but it is well worth it in the end. Again, there are several options for you to pick and choose from starting with, but not limited to:

1. Freelance content writer/ industry expert

2. Content writing agency

3. Content writing team

4. Guest writers/ bloggers

Ask your friends and contacts for recommendations, do your own research on potential content writers or agencies, then proceed accordingly. If verbal recommendations do not come to fruition, you can always head to one of the many freelancing portals and check out candidates there. You can post a project and then people will bid on it and try to get your attention with their offers and writing samples. Make a list of a few potential ones, discuss the task or what the job of content writer for you entails and choose. Rates could even be negotiable so it is a very cost-effective solution. For a list of freelancing platforms, visit http://bit.ly/how-outsource1

But not all writers are a good match for your line of work or the quality you need.

In order to find the best content writer for your business, you must be specific about things such as their:

  • High level of proficiency in English to guarantee that a piece will be well written, without spelling and gramattical errors.

  • Knowledge of SEO principles; understanding keywords and correct keyword density so as not to overstuff the writing in a way that will make search engines exclude you and your website from search results.

  • Ability to write in different styles. Articles, reports and press releases are not written in the same format and whoever you outsource to needs to be well aware of the differences.

  • Story-Telling skills. A good writer has to be able to tell a story and awake the curiosity and interest of the reader, make them find out more about the topic. Every good writer needs this particular skill set.

  • Narrative. Pretty self explanatory.

  • Undertaking research. You need to back up your content with well researched examples, facts and figures that lend a certain dose of credibility to the writing and to your business.

  • Detail orientation. Once you have pointed out what the contents should be about, the developer should follow it and make sure he/she does not miss any of the required points.

  • Working with deadlines. Your content developer needs to commit to submitting a piece to a previously agreed date and time as chances are your business is also working on a deadline. Make sure this is stated clearly and that the developer is certain they can finish in time.

Students may be even considered for minor work on general topics, but stay clear of them for serious business matters.

Writing agencies usually have teams that will do the writing and there is overall a good guarantee that the final product will be of high quality. However, they will charge significantly more than a freelance content writer. We recommend reaching out to an agency or team when the quality of the content is especially important and the topics are too specific to tackle by a sole individual. Another benefit of writing agency is that you can be certain that the delivery will always be on time.

Guest bloggers will lend a certain dose of credibility none of the other content writers will achieve. So, reaching out to a few and making a good arrangement will take you a long way. However, this may not be an option for first timers. You need to have an established website and audience before you this. If you are just starting out, keep the idea in mind for a later date.

To sum up, content development is extremely important for any website. Spend some time finding the best writer/agency to outsource to in order to get the desired results. You can go with a company like InterloperInc or post your job on freelancing platforms.

We hope this article gave you an idea on how to outsource your content development. Good luck!

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Dec 102017
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is still a major driving force in sales. Even though Social Media gets all the hype, email is what delivers in ways that can be better measured. It’s a direct and personal way to interact with customers. But in order to use its potential, you must have a list of emails and constantly grow your list.

How can you convert visitors to your website into leads and leads into sales? Well, you engage with them and encourage them to subscribe to your email newsletter. By simply engaging visitors and asking them to subscribe to your mailing list, you will increase email capture. Offering a reward like a free report, or discount will help you convert even more visitors into subscribers. Once you get that email, you can market to them and inform them about new products and promotions. This also opens the door for driving sales from customers that require more time to be convinced to buy a product.

If you’re wondering why we’re urging you to ask for their email first, it’s because the majority of new visitors do not buy anything on their first visit. That’s why it’s important to encourage people to subscribe to your email list. Getting a visitors email is probably the most valuable marketing exercise for an ecommerce company.

One of the most effective ways to grow your email list is through email pop-ups. This practice is widely used by marketers in ecommerce for its usefulness in list building, traffic conversion and sales influence. However, you must be aware that email pop-ups are a numbers game. The more visitors you engage, the more conversions you’ll get. Try not to annoy your visitors. There are ways to engage shoppers in a relevant way that provides value. Don’t pop-up a subscription box the moment a visitor lands on your website. Be patient. Let him spend some time, see your products, check your prices and then pop-up your form with a nice message.

Your pop-up should represent your brand well and have clear, concise copy and a strong call to action to convince potential customers to act upon it. Focus on these three aspects and you should see high conversion rates with your email pop-ups. Experiment and see what message and what design resonates better with your visitors.

Now that you have a lead capturing mechanism in place, how do you manage them? You must have an auto responder and / or a CRM in place. Without that, you are collecting leads but unable to do much with the leads. If you are not familiar with auto responders, we have a good article on them at http://bloggerkhan.com/review-and-comparison-of-auto-responders/17740 Remember you are collecting leads for a reason. First to convert them to customers and then once they become customers to stay in touch with them so they can buy more from you in the future.

We hope this article was helpful. Good luck!


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Dec 022017
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

Have you been blogging for a while but still get just a little traffic? Isn’t that discouraging. Thinking about quitting? Don’t. Not yet. People will come to read your content only if they know about it. You need to get the word out. The SEO optimization of your content will be of huge help. Giving your content an SEO boost will improve your search engine ranking, more people will be able to find your blog, they in turn may share your posts, cross pollination happens and that’s when traffic starts coming.

Let’s start from the basics. Rule number one is keywords. Keywords are words or phrases people use when looking up stuff on search engines. Decide which ones you will try to rank for. The shorter the keyword phrase, the more effort it will take to rank but it is worth giving a shot. However tempting it may sound to use them multiple times in your post, we do not advise it as search engines ban keyword stuffing. So, think wise and place them strategically. Near the beginning and at the end of the article is a good place to start. Then every 300 words or so, include them again. The Yoast SEO plugin may come in very handy in this regard, definitely worth adding that one to your site. Another good one is All-in-One-SEO.

Here are additional tips to optimize your blog posts for SEO:

  • Add several pictures to your content, with captions, alternate text and description. And give the pictures relevant names whenever you are uploading them to your site. IMG005698.jpg is a no-go if you want to make any kind of SEO effort but sailing-hawaii.jpg adds value to your SEO.

  • Hire somebody to make cartoonized pictures. Readers find them interesting and like to share them on social media. This will get you additional traffic.

  • Add short videos – Google likes multi-media content especially videos.

  • Encourage readers to comment. Ask them questions, include Calls to action etc.

  • Mention your blog posts in your newsletter to reach an even bigger audience.

  • Include quality links whenever you are referencing other blogs, articles, link to previous blogs and articles of yours whenever possible.

  • Have visitor friendly URL. These are easy to read and describe the content.

Last but not least, broaden the reach of your content with the help of social media. Target the channels your current and potential new customers are using, then focus on those. Share your links and snippets on social media and invite the audience to read more on your blog. Programs like Hootsuite make this super easy, just a couple of clicks and the link to your new blog post will be published on all your social media accounts. They even let you schedule content ahead of time.

All of the above does not mean your content should be robotic and full of keywords. Your writing is ultimately the most important thing, however you need to follow our tips and tricks to get the attention of search engine algorithms. Once you write the blog post, read through it to make sure everything is SEO friendly and you are ready to hit publish.

Good luck!

PS: Do you have some points to share about promoting blog posts? If so, share your experiences in the comments section below. That’s how we all learn – by sharing.

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Nov 262017
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if …

Many people who join Linkedin understand its importance for B2B networking but struggle with engaging members. They post content, some heavily, some lightly and though that helps, it still does not deliver many leads.

Many people approach Linkedin as an avenue to siphon off traffic from Linkedin to their own website. Though an understandable and sound approach, that ignores the fact that a lot of engagement can and does takes place on Linkedin itself.

Your profile on Linkedin and your company pages on Linkedin can be put to good use to help people understand what you do and if there is common ground for both of you to further explore. Once you understand this, your strategy changes from generating traffic to your website to generating more profile views and more people requesting to connect with you and joining your group(s).

This video will help you improve your Linkedin engagement, generate more profile views, and grow your Group.

Good Luck!

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Nov 222017
 

The Best Regional Books for Plant Identification and Foraging Wild Foods and Herbs

By Meghan Gemma with Juliet Blankespoor

The following article is a sneak peek into our 375-hour Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs, which begins in early 2018! The course begins with the basic ground rules of foraging safety and ethics, and then moves on to botany and plant identification. Before you know it, you’ll have the skills and confidence to safely identify and harvest wild plants.

You’ll befriend THE most common edible and medicinal wayside plants, including dandelion, stinging nettles, violet, yarrow, burdock, rose, goldenrod, and many others. The printable manual is hundreds of pages long and filled with close-up photos for identification, medicinal uses, and loads of easy-to-follow recipes. In fact, most of our plant profiles contain more detail than you’ll find in any book on wild foods and herbs.

Registration for this online course runs December 20th, 2017 through January 15th, 2018 and is only open once a year. The course runs January 15th through November 1st, 2018!

Juliet Blankespoor’s study, including her “top shelf” books

If you’ve ever felt frustrated trying to choose a reliable field guide to take foraging with you, you’re not alone. There are heaps of books on the subject, and the selection can be dizzying. It’s truly important—you might even say a matter of life and death—to make solid choices in this department. To give you a hand, we cozied up in the Chestnut library and got studious, reviewing all the regional wild food and medicine books we could get our hands on, and checking each one for botanical accuracy and attention to detail. The best are queued up here, and there’s a little something for everyone, from bright-eyed beginners to seasoned foragers and plant enthusiasts.

The books we feature are fairly specific; they dial in on bioregions throughout North America and are tailored to help you safely identify plants and forage wild food and medicine right where you live. As a companion to this list, please check out The Ten Best Books on Foraging Wild Foods and Herbs, which is the field guide lowdown to our favorite general foraging books (which pertain to most of temperate North America and Eurasia). We highly recommend starting with our article Sustainably Foraging for Wild Edibles and Herbs. You’ll notice some general guides on botany and plant families at the beginning of this list. Understanding plant families—and how to identify them—is a huge first step for any forager or self-respecting plant nerd.

And if all this merely whets your appetite, come join us for our Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs (releasing with the New Year 2018). We’ll give you all the tools you need to explore plant identification, wild food and medicine foraging, and the herbal uses of the most abundant and healing wild plants of the temperate world. Plus, we’ll share our very favorite culinary and medicinal recipes. On the other hand, if a more comprehensive course on DIY herbalism is up your alley, take a peek at our Online Herbal Immersion.

In good conscience, we simply couldn’t list many popular wild food guides here, mostly because they do not emphasize poisonous look-alikes in their plant descriptions, which could mean fatal consequences for foragers using those books. If you think there’s a book that deserves to be mentioned but isn’t, please let us know—we’ll continue expanding this guide as new resources become available!

I can’t wait to really dive into this book!

Contents:

General Botany Books

Botany in a Day by Thomas J. Elpel. A botanical classic and best seller that has a place on every forager’s shelf. Elpel shares what he calls “The Patterns Method” of plant identification, a fast and easy way to begin recognizing the key traits of various plant families. This tutorial has helped more budding botanists, herbalists, and foragers than any other identification guide I know! Elpel also features descriptions of plant families throughout North America, along with profiles of notable members from each family, including comments on edible and medicinal uses. Highly recommended. Be sure to purchase the most recent edition.

Flowering Plant Families of the World by V. H. Heywood. A beautiful book for the coffee table or reference library, this hardcover classic is filled with gorgeous, scientifically accurate illustrations and range maps for over five hundred plant families throughout the world. Make sure to purchase the 2007 edition.

Photographic Atlas of Botany and Guide to Plant Identification by James Castern. Easy to read, with detailed color photographs that illustrate plant family characteristics, this guide is perfect for those who are really excited about botany and plant identification. The book is spiral-bound and quite hefty, so it’s more of a desk reference than an actual field guide. Some of the plant family classifications are out of date, but the general botany photos are still applicable, as is the bulk of the plant family photographs and descriptions.

Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary by James Harris and Melinda Woolf Harris. An excellent reference for those studying botany or wanting to use technical keys in the field, this guide clearly illustrates nearly two thousand botanical terms!

A Tour of the Flowering Plants by Priscilla Spears. Filled with high-quality color photographs, this is a wonderful reference for those who prefer visual learning. The author illustrates and explains over a hundred flowering plant families and includes a botanical glossary to help the beginner get started.

Usnea (Usnea sp.) harvest

Northwestern United States + British Columbia

The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North by Beverley Gray. Part plant-identification guide, part food- and medicine-making manual, this book is a treasury of plants that grow throughout the north (and much of the temperate world). Excellent reading for beginners, experienced foragers, and anyone who loves herbs. Speaks to the heart and soul of wild food and herbal medicine. Features lots of photography and beautiful writing.

Discovering Wild Plants: Alaska, Western Canada, the Northwest by Janice Schofield Eaton. This superb field guide covers 147 wild plants, detailing their identification, range, traditional and contemporary uses, and medicinal properties. Each plant is accompanied by photographs and line drawings. The book is currently out of print, making used copies a bit more expensive than other field guides, but it’s worth the splurge!

The Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California, Second Edition edited by Bruce Baldwin et al. This is a hefty hardcover tome that covers both native and naturalized vascular plants throughout California. This is a technical key best suited to seasoned botanists; IT’S NOT A BEGINNER GUIDE! Unlike many technical keys, however, it features illustrations, and a new chapter on the vegetative history of California is included.

Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West by Michael Moore. One of several invaluable guides written by herbalist Michael Moore. This book covers plants ranging from Baja California to Alaska, featuring identification tips, medicinal uses, preparation, and contraindications for each herb—all infused with Moore’s characteristic wit and humor. Simple line drawings, maps, and some color photos are included throughout.

Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fungi of Coastal Northern California by Noah Siegel and Christian Schwarz. A gorgeous and trustworthy guide to the mushrooms of coastal California, from Monterey County to the Oregon border. Splendid photographs and thorough information on identification, edibility, and toxicity. Easy enough for beginners, detailed enough for experienced mushroom hunters.

Northwest Trees: Identifying and Understanding the Region’s Native Trees by Stephen Arno. An easy-to-use guide with beautiful illustrations and species descriptions. Arno includes writings about the traditional uses of trees, ecology, as well as detailed descriptions, inviting the reader to slow down and take in each tree deeply. Highly recommended. This makes a good companion to a more traditional field identification guide for trees. Be sure to get the thirtieth-anniversary deluxe edition.

Pacific Seaweeds: A Guide to Common Seaweeds of the West Coast by Louis Druehl and Bridgette Clarkston. A beautiful guide to Pacific seaweeds. It features color photos, nutritional information, and accessible recipes—like seaweed kimchi and kelp chips. A lightweight book perfect for foraging trips to the coast.

Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska by Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon. This user-friendly field guide features nearly eight hundred species of plants commonly found along the Pacific coast—from Oregon to Alaska—including trees, shrubs, wildflowers, aquatic plants, grasses, ferns, mosses, and lichens. The book encompasses the entire coastal region, from shoreline to alpine, and the western Cascades. Perfect for the beginner and experienced forager.

Trees and Shrubs of the Pacific Northwest by Mark Turner and Ellen Kuhlmann. This is Mark Turner’s companion guide to Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest. It covers 568 species of woody plants throughout Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and northern California with vivid color photographs, identifying characteristics, and range maps. This is an excellent book for beginners or those new to the region.

Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest by Mark Turner and Phyllis Gustafson. This colorful guide describes and illustrates 1,220 plant species that are common to the Pacific Northwest, from southern British Columbia to northern California, from the coast to the mountains and high desert. Plants featured include natives, nonnatives, perennials, annuals, and shrubs. Beautifully photographed, the book is small enough to carry in your backpack and is suitable for all experience levels.

Field guides and foraging books for the Pacific Northwest and coastal British Columbia

Regional California Guides

The Jepson Desert Manual: Vascular Plants of Southeastern California by Margriet Wetherwax. A comprehensive field guide focused exclusively on native and naturalized vascular plants of California’s southeastern deserts, including the Mojave Desert, Sonoran Desert, and southern Great Basin (including the White Mountains). This is a technical key, NOT A BEGINNER GUIDE!

The Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California, Second Edition edited by Bruce Baldwin et al. This is a hefty hardcover tome that covers both native and naturalized vascular plants throughout California. This is a technical key best suited to seasoned botanists; IT’S NOT A BEGINNER GUIDE! Unlike many technical keys, however, it features illustrations, and a new chapter on the vegetative history of California is included.

The New Wildcrafted Cuisine by Pascal Baudar. This is a truly groundbreaking book, with delectable imagery and recipes that push the edge of even wild cuisine (edible insects, for example). More cookbook than field guide, you’ll find a wealth of wild recipes arranged by foraging season. Most plants in the book can be found throughout the temperate world, but others are found only in Southern California and Mediterranean climates. This is a gorgeous book sure to spice up wild food conversation.

Sierra Nevada Wildflowers: Including Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks by Karen Wiese. A handy pocket guide meant to be used while plants are in flower. This is an accessible book for the novice botanist, and features easy-to-read descriptions and color photos, plus notes on range and bloom season.

Trees and Shrubs of Nevada and Placer Counties, California by the Redbud Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. The arboreal companion to Wildflowers of Nevada and Placer Counties (see below). Equally charming.

Wildflowers of Nevada and Placer Counties by the Redbud Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. A lovely little guide brimming with photos, brief ID descriptions, and plenty of interesting comments on ecological role. Edibility is briefly mentioned where applicable.

Wildflowers of the Eastern Sierra and Adjoining Mojave Desert and Great Basin by Laird Blackwell. An easy-to-use pocket guide for identifying regional flowers and shrubs. Each plant description is accompanied by color photos and information on habitat, bloom season, and viewing locations.

Juliet’s library

Southwestern United States

Common Southwestern Native Plants: An Identification Guide by Jack Carter, Martha Carter, and Donna Stevens. An easy to-use field guide with detailed line drawings and color photos that features both woody and herbaceous flowering plants. This book lives up to its name, introducing the most common species and not being thorough in its scope.

Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants by Carolyn Niethammer. A flavorful cookbook and field guide that features hand-drawn illustrations, identification tips, harvesting instructions, and 150 southwestern recipes. Ideal for foragers and cooks of all skill levels.

Desert Wildflowers of North America by Ronald Taylor. A beautifully photographed pocket guide featuring range maps, descriptions, and commentary on the desert ecosystem. Geared toward amateur botanists.

Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert by Wendy Hodgson. A beautiful and well-researched hardcover book featuring the traditional uses of nearly 540 edible plants. Includes wonderful black-and-white photos and gorgeous drawings throughout. More ethnobotanical in scope and less how-to guide. Best accompanied by a field guide.

The Jepson Desert Manual: Vascular Plants of Southeastern California by Margriet Wetherwax. A comprehensive field guide focused exclusively on native and naturalized vascular plants of California’s southeastern deserts, including the Mojave Desert, Sonoran Desert, and southern Great Basin (including the White Mountains). This is a technical key, NOT A BEGINNER GUIDE!

Medicinal Plants of the American Southwest by Charles Kane. Like Michael Moore’s books, this guide blends herbal materia medica with plant identification, making it very handy for medicinal foragers. Along with botanical descriptions and suggestions for collection and preparation, Kane shares medicinal indications, herbal precautions, and dosages. There is a centerfold of color photos.

Medicinal Plants of the Desert and Canyon West: A Guide to Identifying, Preparing, and Using Traditional Medicinal Plants Found in the Deserts and Canyons of the West and Southwest by Michael Moore. A must-have guide for any herbalist or wild forager of the Southwest. Arranged alphabetically, the book features the medicinal plants of the region as well as simple line drawings and a centerfold of color photos. Excellent for both beginners and pros; features a therapeutic use index and a glossary to explain botanical and medical terminology.

Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West (revised and expanded edition) by Michael Moore. One of the very best medicinal field guides for the region, this guide is highly relevant to New Mexico, Arizona, west Texas, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and California. Moore writes with his characteristic dry humor but is completely thorough, discussing identification, range, medicinal use, preparation, and contraindications for each herb. The book features line drawings and a centerfold of color photographs and is light enough to easily carry into the field.

Plants of Arizona by Anne Orth Epple. The only complete guide to the rich and unique flora of Arizona, featuring more than nine hundred full-color photographs and detailed descriptions of each plant. Also applicable to much of New Mexico. Be sure to get the latest edition, published in 2012.

The Prickly Pear Cookbook by Carolyn Niethammer. A delightful cookbook devoted to one of the most treasured native foods of the Americas. Learn how to prep and cook the abundant prickly pear cactus.

Southwest Foraging: 117 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Barrel Cactus to Wild Oregano by John Slattery. Highly recommended for southwestern foragers. This guide is wonderfully accessible to all skill levels and features a range of nourishing edible plants, from wild greens to cacti. The book is filled with full-color photographs and detailed information on identification, harvesting, and preparation.

Trees and Shrubs of New Mexico, Revised and Expanded by Jack L. Carter. Designed for use by both laypersons and plant scientists, this book includes illustrations, descriptions, distribution maps, and dichotomous keys for more than 430 native, naturalized, and cultivated trees, shrubs, and woody vines that are known to occur in New Mexico. A pictorial glossary provides much of the basic information needed to find the plants in question.

Regional Southwestern Field Guides

A Guide to Plants of the Northern Chihuahuan Desert by Carolyn Dodson. This is a great book for beginning botanists or visitors exploring the region. Filled with photos, line drawings, and brief descriptions, it occasionally references edible and medicinal uses along with notes on toxicity.

Mojave Desert Wildflowers by Jon Mark Stewart. Most notable for its gorgeous photos, this is very small guide that’s easy to tuck in your daypack. A handy reference for identifying desert wildflowers in bloom.

Sonoran Desert Wildflowers by Richard Spellenberg. A light and handy guide to desert wildflowers (best used when plants are in bloom). Spellenberg shares brief plant descriptions, comments on ecological roles, and wee mentions on edible uses. Lovely photos throughout.

The extensive library at Mountain Gardens in Celo, NC

Western North America

Trees of Western North America: Princeton Field Guides by Richard Spellenberg, Christopher Earle, and Gil Nelson. A comprehensive and illustrated guide that covers 630 species of native and naturalized trees in the western United States and Canada as far east as the Great Plains. Features color illustrations and range maps. Small enough to put in your backpack.

Weeds of the West, Revised Edition published by University of Wyoming with multiple authors. A pictorial and descriptive identification guide for wild western weeds that shows the plants throughout their life cycle. A very useful reference, but a bit “down” on weeds in general—talks about spraying, eradicating, etc.

Western Trees by George Petrides and Olivia Petrides. A pocket field guide in the Peterson Field Guides tradition, with color drawings, photos, range maps, and identifying descriptions. Occasional, brief references to indigenous uses. One of the best Peterson Field Guides on plants.

I can’t find the catnip entry in the darned index!

Rocky Mountain North America

The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North by Beverley Gray. Part plant-identification guide, part food- and medicine-making manual, this book is a treasury of plants that grow throughout the north (and much of the temperate world). Excellent reading for beginners, experienced foragers, and anyone who loves herbs. Speaks to the heart and soul of wild food and herbal medicine. Features lots of photography and beautiful writing. Especially relevant to the northern Rockies.

Handbook of Rocky Mountain Plants by Ruth Ashton Nelson. This book comprises fairly technical keys for wildflower identification and includes over 350 black-and-white illustrations. Small enough to take into the field; recommended for more experienced botanists and foragers.

Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West (the revised and expanded edition) by Michael Moore. One of the very best medicinal field guides for the region—highly relevant to New Mexico, Arizona, west Texas, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and California. Moore’s entertaining and completely thorough writing discusses identification, range, medicinal use, preparation, and contraindications for each herb. The book features line drawings and a centerfold of color photographs, and it’s is light enough to carry into the field.

Plants of the Rocky Mountains: Lone Pine Field Guide by Linda Kershaw, Andy MacKinnon, and Jim Pojar. Over thirteen hundred species of trees, shrubs, wildflowers, grasses, ferns, mosses, and lichens are described and illustrated. The authors include notes on origin of name, ecology, native uses, edibility, and similar species. The book also features color-coded sections to allow for quick reference. Perfect for all skill levels.

Wild About Wildflowers: Extreme Botanizing in Crested Butte, Wildflower Capital of Colorado by Katherine Darrow. Applicable to the central and southern Rockies, filled with beautiful photos, identification tips, folklore, ecology, and occasional references to edible and medicinal uses. A useful pocket guide organized by plant family.

Does this book taste as good as it looks?

Midwestern North America + the Prairie States and Provinces

Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie: An Ethnobotanical Guide by Kelly Kindscher. A companion guide to Medicinal Wild Plants of the Prairie: An Ethnobotanical Guide (see below) that merges historical and modern knowledge of the wild food plants of the prairie.

The Forager’s Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer. Thayer’s books are hands-down the best resources on wild foods, being enjoyable to read and very informational. Thayer shares detailed material on plant identification (accompanied by color photos) and food preparation, along with entertaining anecdotal stories. He specifically emphasizes wild foods and doesn’t discuss medicinal properties; however, his books are valuable field guides for identifying many herbs that straddle the food-medicine divide (elderberry, for example). Highly recommended. (Note: Thayer does not discuss medicinal uses.)

Incredible Wild Edibles: 36 Plants That Can Change Your Life by Samuel Thayer. Incredible Wild Edibles is styled in a similar fashion to Thayer’s other books but covers a completely new selection of herbs, roots, nuts, and berries. (Note: Thayer does not discuss medicinal uses.)

Medicinal Wild Plants of the Prairie: An Ethnobotanical Guide by Kelly Kindscher. An interesting guide for those who enjoy plant history; includes Native American uses, modern medicinal uses, cultivation, and identification characteristics. Black-and-white drawings and range maps accompany each plant. Includes common and traditional names.

Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer. Did you notice we’re recommending another book by Sam Thayer? That’s because he’s simply one of the very best wild food writers around. If you can only purchase a book or two to get started, we suggest beginning with his guides. This is the companion guide to Thayer’s The Forager’s Harvest, featuring a fresh collection of plants. Equally essential and recommended. (Note: Thayer does not discuss medicinal uses.)

Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide by Lawrence Newcomb. Lawrence Newcomb’s system of wildflower identification is based on natural structural features that are easily visible to the untrained eye, enabling amateurs and experts alike to identify almost any wildflower quickly and accurately. This is a great first field guide for beginners and is small enough to fit in a very big pocket. More applicable to the eastern portion of the Midwest.

Trees of Eastern North America (A Princeton Field Guide) by Gil Nelson, Christopher Earle, and Richard Spellenberg. Illustrated and comprehensive, this field guide uses a simple botanical key. The book covers 825 species, including all the native and naturalized trees of the eastern United States and Canada as far west as the Great Plains, with mention of those species found only in tropical and subtropical Florida and northernmost Canada. Somewhat heavy, but small enough to tote into the field.

Wildflowers of Tennessee, the Ohio Valley, and the Southern Appalachians by Dennis Horn, David Duhl, and Tavia Cathcart. An excellent color photo guide that is tailored to the layperson. This book includes a few botanical keys as well as some edible/herbal tidbits, a little ecology, and the etymology of plant names. More applicable to the eastern portion of the Midwest.

Ruby and the Morel (Morchella esculenta)

Northeastern United States + Southeastern Canada

100 Edible Mushrooms by Michael Kuo. Engaging to read, Kuo’s book features a hundred of the most common edible mushrooms and includes color photos, edibility ratings, descriptions, poisonous relatives and look-alikes, and a recipe section in the back of the book. Not exactly a pocket guide, but small enough to accompany you into the field. Juliet’s favorite book on wild mushrooms for beginners.

Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada by David Spahr. Filled with beautiful photos, this guide features easy-to-read descriptions of the Northeast’s most common medicinal and edible mushrooms. Includes harvesting and preparation suggestions.

Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada by Henry Gleason and Arthur Cronquist. A technical flora geared toward the experienced botanist or dedicated beginner. This is a technical key, NOT A BEGINNER GUIDE! Uniquely accompanied by a separate illustrated manual, which we recommend as a complementary resource: Illustrated Companion to Gleason and Cronquist’s Manual by Noel Holmgren.

Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide by Lawrence Newcomb. Lawrence Newcomb’s system of wildflower identification is based on natural structural features that are easily visible to the untrained eye, enabling amateurs and experts alike to identify almost any wildflower quickly and accurately. This is a great first field guide for beginners and is small enough to fit in a very big pocket.

The Smithsonian Guide to Seaside Plants of the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts, from Louisiana to Massachusetts, Exclusive of Lower Peninsular Florida by Wilbur Duncan and Marion Duncan. Includes nearly one thousand species of wildflowers, trees, shrubs, grasses, rushes, and sedges. A tad outdated at this point—especially the plant family designations—but still a good primer on the most common plants of the Gulf and coasts.

Trees of Eastern North America (A Princeton Field Guide) by Gil Nelson, Christopher Earle, and Richard Spellenberg. Illustrated and comprehensive, this field guide uses a simple botanical key. The book covers 825 species, including all the native and naturalized trees of the eastern United States and Canada as far west as the Great Plains, with mention of those species found only in tropical and subtropical Florida and northernmost Canada. Somewhat heavy, but small enough to tote into the field.

Wildflowers of New England by Ted Elliman and the New England Wildflower Society. A field guide that features a straightforward key for identifying over a thousand wildflowers throughout all six New England states. Each plant is accompanied by brief descriptions and a color photo. Pocket sized.

Our favorite field guides and foraging books for the northeastern U.S. and adjacent Canadian regions

Southeastern United States

A Field Guide to the Trees and Shrubs of the Southern Appalachians by Robert E. Swanson. A detailed field guide compiled by the authors over a decade of hiking through the region. Covers 280 species of trees, shrubs, and woody vines in a range of ecosystems. Applicable to the Carolinas, Georgia, and eastern Tennessee (including Great Smoky Mountains National Park). Features illustrated keys that can be used in all four seasons.

Flora of the Southern and Mid-Atlantic States by Alan Weakley. This is a technical flora (not for beginners; this is VERY technical) of the Southeast available for purchase as a print copy or free PDF from the UNC Herbarium. This is a weighty book and not easy to carry into the field.

Florida Ethnobotany by Daniel Austin. Nearly a thousand pages on the traditional and indigenous uses of southeastern herbs—medicines, dye and fiber plants, foods, and mystical tools. Includes line drawings and a selection of color plates. On the expensive side, but this book is worth the splurge if you live in Florida and are into bioregional herbs!

Medicinal Plants of the Southern Appalachians by Patricia Kyritsi Howell. An introductory medicinal guide written by a knowledgeable Southern herbalist. Herbal descriptions feature both traditional and modern medicinal uses, general ID, habitat descriptions, harvesting and preparation suggestions, dosage, and a sprinkling of recipes. No photos, and should be accompanied by a more detailed field guide for foraging.

Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States by Alan Bessette, William Roody, Arleen Bessette, and Dail Dunaway. A descriptive guide to the fungi of the Southeast, featuring ID characteristics, color photos, and comments on edibility. Simple enough to be used by any forager, this book has some extra features that make it appealing for more advanced mycologists (such as photos of microscope slides).

Mushrooms of West Virginia and the Central Appalachians by William Roody. A fantastic guide for Appalachian mushroom foragers. Includes detailed descriptions, notes on edibility, and vibrant color photographs. Small enough to be carried by hand in the field. Highly recommended for both novice mushroom hunters and experienced foragers.

A Reference Guide to Medicinal Plants: Herbal Medicine Past and Present by John Crellin and Jane Philpott. Based on the teachings of southern folk herbalist Tommie Bass, this guide is a treasury of old-timey herbal wisdom and little-used local medicinals. Featuring over seven hundred plants, the book blends folk wisdom with modern scientific research. An excellent reference for those interested in the historical uses of herbs.

Trees of the Southeastern United States by Wilbur Duncan and Marion Duncan. This field guide features excellent keys, species descriptions, ecological ranges, and color photos. It’s midlevel to technical and very comprehensive. The guide treats more than three hundred species—every one known to occur in the region—from the Coastal Plain to the highest elevations. Included are trees native to the region as well as those introduced and now reproducing.

Weeds of the South by Charles Bryson and Michael DeFelice. A guide to four hundred of the most common weeds of the southern United States, featuring range maps, color photos, and handy descriptions of both seedlings and mature plants. Includes notes on toxicity and habitat, but there is no medicinal or edible information. The authors label weeds as “troublesome,” so don’t expect a plant-positive experience (but we still think it’s a handy guide)! More of a desk reference in size.

Wildflowers and Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont by Timothy Spira. A unique field guide! Rather than organizing plants by flower color or family characteristics, as most guidebooks do, botanist Tim Spira takes a holistic, ecological approach and organizes plants on the basis of their natural communities in the wild. His beautifully photographed book includes trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants. Not quite pocket-sized, but it’s still small enough to slip into your daypack.

Wildflowers of Tennessee, the Ohio Valley, and the Southern Appalachians by Dennis Horn, David Duhl, and Tavia Cathcart. An excellent and comprehensive color photo guide that is tailored to the layperson. This book includes a few botanical keys as well as some edible/herbal tidbits, a little ecology, and the etymology of plant names. The book is most specific to Tennessee but is applicable to most southern and mid-Atlantic states.

The Southeast’s finest botanical field guides

Florida

Florida Ethnobotany by Daniel Austin. Nearly a thousand pages on the traditional and indigenous uses of southeastern herbs—medicines, dye and fiber plants, foods, and mystical tools. Includes line drawings and a selection of color plates. On the expensive side, but this book is worth the splurge if you live in Florida and are into bioregional herbs!

Florida Wildflowers, a Comprehensive Guide by Walter Kingsley Taylor. A colorful field guide that discusses plant description, time of flowering, habitat, and Florida distribution. Often includes comments on related species, etymology, and even culinary, medicinal, and landscape uses. Features bright photography.

Florida Wildflowers in Their Natural Communities by Walter Kingsley Taylor. A unique field guide that features plants and their ecological communities. The book is filled with color photos and botanical descriptions that are accessible for both amateurs and more experienced botanists.

Florida’s Edible Wild Plants: A Guide to Collecting and Cooking by Peggy Sias Lantz. An easy-to-read guide to the edible plants of Florida, including their uses, basic identification traits, drawings, photographs, and recipes. A more detailed field guide should be used as a companion to properly ID plants.

Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida, Third Edition by Richard Wunderlin and Bruce Hansen. This is a very technical key tailored to the experienced botanist; NOT recommended for beginners.

The Shrubs and Woody Vines of Florida: A Reference and Field Guide by Gil Nelson. A companion guide to the Trees of Florida, this book is written to help you identify plants in the field—you won’t find any edible or medicinal information. Easy to use, with simple line drawings and color photos. A bit on the technical side for absolute newcomers.

The Trees of Florida: A Reference and Field Guide, Second Edition by Gil Nelson. A comprehensive guide to Florida’s amazing variety of tree species. There are nearly six hundred color photographs and many drawings and range maps. And now included is a key to tree families that will help with field identification. A bit on the technical side for absolute newcomers.

The best field guides for Florida

This article is a sneak peek into our 375-hour
Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs,
which begins in January 2018!

This groundbreaking program is shaping up to be THE most comprehensive online course on the topic of harvesting wild medicinals and edible weeds.

Registration for this online course runs December 20th, 2017 through January 15th, 2018 and is only open once a year. The course runs January 15th through November 1st, 2018!

Click for detailed story

Nov 172017
 

By Meghan Gemma with Juliet Blankespoor

The following article is a sneak peek into our 375-hour Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs, which begins in January 2018! The course begins with the basic ground rules of foraging safety and ethics, and then moves on to botany and plant identification. Before you know it, you’ll have the skills and confidence to safely identify and harvest wild plants.

You’ll befriend THE most common edible and medicinal wayside plants, including dandelion, stinging nettles, violet, yarrow, burdock, rose, goldenrod, and many others. The printable manual is hundreds of pages long and filled with close-up photos for identification, medicinal uses, and loads of easy-to-follow recipes. In fact, most of our plant profiles contain more detail than you’ll find in any book on wild foods and herbs.

Registration for this online course runs December 20th, 2017 through January 15th, 2018 and is only open once a year. The course runs January 15th through November 1st, 2018!

The best way to learn about wild plants–right at their side


Every season speaks to the heart in its own way, and the brisk days of fall beckon us—one leaf at a time, and in the most ancient manner—to fill our pantries with nourishing food and medicine and softly burrow in. While the squirrels are thriftily gathering black walnuts and acorns, my family is doing the same. By the time winter blows in, we have a rich and wild supply of food—jars of nettles pesto, baskets of nuts, stores of hawthorn berries and rosehips, bottles of elderberry syrup; the list goes on. These are our winter treasures, unpacked one by one as the dark days unfold.

This makes winter a season of literally tasting and counting our blessings. It’s also a time for other slow and gentle pleasures, like curling up with a great book or delving into new studies. At the Chestnut School, we’ve been brewing nourishing cold-season treats to share with our herbal community: a reading list, a collection of fresh blog posts, and a brand new online course. The theme for all this seasonal inspiration? Wild food and medicine foraging.

If you’re curious about foraging, we recommend one of the first things you do is cultivate an ethos centered in sustainability and reciprocity. See our article Foraging for Wild Edibles and Herbs for more on this. Next, set yourself up with a stack of great foraging guides (see the resources listed below) or, better yet, apprentice yourself to a seasoned forager. As we spin into 2018, we’ll be offering our own mentorship to you in our 375-hour Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs. This program is shaping up to be THE most comprehensive online course on the topic! The printable manual is over 500 pages long and filled with close-up photos for identification, medicinal uses, and loads of easy-to-follow recipes. You can also check out the wild foods section of our blog, and our Online Herbal Immersion, which features an entire module on foraging.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of cold-season stockpiles and cozy reading nooks everywhere, we’ve gathered a list of our most cherished books on wild food and herb foraging. Plenty of fantastic field guides and wild food books didn’t make it into this post. But keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming features on regional wild food books and our top picks for free online foraging resources. We don’t receive any compensation for promoting the books in our list—they are simply our personal favorites. We’ve included links to purchase directly from the author, when applicable, but you can find almost all of these books online or order them through your local bookstore. Note that some of these books cover medicinal and edible uses, whereas some cover only wild foods.

Juliet’s top shelf library and reading nook

1. Foraging & Feasting: A Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook by Dina Falconi, illustrated by Wendy Hollender (Botanical Arts Press, 2013).

We treasure this book for its beautiful illustrations and delicious recipes. It’s easily our most reached-for wild foods cookbook. The book is divided into two main parts: botanical drawings paired with key identification tips, followed by a bounty of herbal, wild foods recipes. Many of the recipes are flexible to work for a variety of diets—gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, raw—and Dina includes an array of master recipes that can be adapted to different plants throughout the seasons. There’s also a brief medicinal discussion of each herb as well as some nutritional tidbits. Many of the featured plants are common in the herb garden (elderberry, rose, bee balm, etc.), so this is an excellent resource for the gardener and forager alike.

If you love Dina’s recipes, you can catch more of them in our Online Foraging Course—she’s a contributor! You can purchase her book and access her blog via Botanical Arts Press.

2. The Forager’s Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants (Forager’s Harvest Press, 2006) and Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants (Forager’s Harvest Press, 2010) by Samuel Thayer.

Thayer’s books are hands-down the best resources on wild foods, being enjoyable to read and very informational. These two are companion guides, each featuring unique plants. Thayer shares detailed material on plant identification (accompanied by color photos) and food preparation, along with entertaining anecdotes. His books apply widely in the United States and Canada and include many plants found elsewhere in the temperate world. Thayer emphasizes wild foods specifically and doesn’t discuss medicinal properties; however, his books are valuable field guides for identifying many herbs that straddle the food-medicine divide (elderberry, chickweed, and raspberry for example). Highly recommended. You’ll need to buy the books separately, and they can be purchased directly from the author here.

Samuel Thayer’s books are indispendable for the wild foods forager

3. Incredible Wild Edibles: 36 Plants That Can Change Your Life by Samuel Thayer (Forager’s Harvest Press, 2017).

Did you notice we’re recommending another book by Sam Thayer? That’s because he’s simply one of the very best wild food writers around. If you can only purchase a book or two to get started, we suggest beginning with his guides (Note: Thayer does not discuss medicinal uses). Incredible Wild Edibles is styled in a similar fashion to Thayer’s other books but covers a completely fresh collection of plants. And it’s equally wonderful and essential. You can purchase Thayer’s books directly, and check out his blog here.

4. Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants by “Wildman” Steve Brill and Evelyn Dean (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2010).

You can gather an immense amount of wild food knowledge from this book. Over 500 edible and medicinal plants are organized by harvesting season, with identifying characteristics, detailed preparation information, and beautiful line drawings to accompany each one. This was one of the first books on foraging Juliet owned, she’s learned more about wild foods from this book than any other. In the back of the book, you’ll find a collection of Steve’s recipes. You can purchase the book and visit Steve’s blog here.

“Say what-I’ve never come across that before!”

5. Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate by John Kallas (Gibbs Smith, 2010).

This is one of the finest books on wild edible greens, with thorough species descriptions, beautiful photographs, nutritional profiles, and lots of recipes. Wild greens are an abundant food source in nearly all temperate places—including cities—so this book is a valuable resource for foragers everywhere. Kallas himself is a botanist, teacher, nutritionist, and wild foods expert who has foraged throughout the United States, Canada, and the European countryside. We appreciate that the book covers fewer plants in greater depth, which is more helpful than superficially covering hundreds of plants. This book focuses on identifying and harvesting wild foods; it doesn’t explore medicinal uses. More about John’s work can be found on his Wild Food Adventures website.

The library and apothecary at Mountain Gardens in Celo, North Carolina

6. Ugly Little Greens: Gourmet Dishes Crafted from Foraged Ingredients by Mia Wasilevich (Page Street Publishing, 2017).

There’s nothing ugly about this book, which spoofs on the common misconceptions about weeds. It’s packed with fancy wild food recipes and sumptuous color photos. Many of the recipes are easy to prepare, but in general, this book is ideal for the epicurean forager, with dishes like nettles benedict and cattail pollen madeleines. Not just limited to greens, it features a diverse collection of plants that grow in most temperate to subtropical climates. The book blends plant identification with preparation but dials in on the recipe side of things. Therefore, it’s best accompanied by a field guide that features a lot of identification.

We’re excited to say Mia is a recipe contributor in our Online Foraging Course! You can check out her blog and schedule of classes at Transitional Gastronomy.

These wild foods books focus on the culinary aspect of wild edibles

7. Wild Food by Roger Phillips (Little, Brown, 1986).

This wonderful classic was written by a British family who spent time in North America, camping and preparing wild foods and drinks. A wide range of wild edibles are covered, including mushrooms, herbs, seaweeds, flowers, roots, greens, nuts, and berries. The book features loads of simple recipes accompanied by sublimely staged photos of wild foods dishes in their native habitat. (Think glamping, with a wild foods twist.) Be sure to purchase the 1986 edition of this book, which is affordable to purchase used and offers more recipes and species profiles than the newer edition.

Everyone LOVES to key plants out

8. The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival by Katrina Blair (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2014).

We love the spirit of this book. It covers fewer plants than your average field guide but takes you on a deep journey of discovery with each one. It includes edible and medicinal uses for many of the most common weeds found worldwide in the temperate climate, along with ethnobotanical information. Some tips on identification are included, but we recommend using a field guide along with her descriptions to make sure you have the right plant. This is a great resource for both urban and rural dwellers. You can order the book here.

Burdock harvest (Arctium minus)

9. The New Wildcrafted Cuisine: Exploring the Exotic Gastronomy of Local Terroir by Pascal Baudar (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2016).

Baudar’s book is truly groundbreaking, with delectable imagery and recipes that push the edge of even wild cuisine (edible insects, for example). In this light, we recommend his book for the curious and adventuresome cook, or for anyone wanting to take their wild food dishes to the next level. Arranged by season, the book balances progressive recipes with traditional preparations; lots of pictorial how-to’s feature fermentation and food preservation. Most plants in the book can be found throughout the temperate world, but others are found only in Mediterranean climates. This is a gorgeous book that is sure to spice up wild food conversation. You can read more about Pascal here.

“That looks good enough to eat!”

10. Discovering Wild Plants: Alaska, Western Canada, the Northwest by Janice Schofield Eaton (Alaska Northwest Books, 2003).

Don’t let the title of this book put you off—it’s relevant to temperate climates around the world. And it’s a superb field guide. The book covers 147 wild plants, detailing their identification, range, traditional and contemporary uses, and medicinal properties. Each plant is accompanied by photographs and line drawings. The book is currently out of print, making used copies a bit more expensive than other field guides, but it’s so good that it still made our top 10!

Juliet’s herbal and botanical library

Do yourself a favor and also read: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions, 2015).

This book will grow your heart and soul, and we recommend it to absolutely everyone. Though not technically about foraging, Kimmerer’s writing on our relationship to land, food, medicine, and legacy will change how you live and, yes—forage. Prepare yourself for incredible storytelling, immense beauty, and possibly a lot of tears.

Do you have a favorite wild foods book that didn’t make it onto our list?

We’d love to hear about it (including any regional guides that you enjoy)! There are so many wonderful books on this subject that we couldn’t include them all here. However, we’ll be giving a shout-out to even more wild foods and medicines resources on the blog soon, so stay tuned.

Felines enjoy the finer points of wild food identification

This article is a sneak peek into our 375-hour
Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs,
which begins in January 2018!

This groundbreaking program is shaping up to be THE most comprehensive online course on the topic of harvesting wild medicinals and edible weeds.

Registration for this online course runs December 20th, 2017 through January 15th, 2018 and is only open once a year. The course runs January 15th through November 1st, 2018!

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Oct 292017
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if …

Retail Stores are notorious for not doing enough to encourage repeat business. They don’t have a mechanism in place to keep in touch with customers. Wisen up. You need to have a mailing list and these tips will help you grow your list.

  1. Link an auto responder or a CRM or both to your website.
  2. Include a flyer in every bag that gives your URL and encourage people to sign up for your newsletter to qualify for a monthly give away.
  3. Place a computer or two with appropriate signage in your store encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter to qualify for a monthly give away.
  4. Advertise in your store and on your website email only specials. Make sure you honor that and don’t offer that discount to anyone not on the list.
  5. In every email, encourage people to share that email and ask their friends to sign up to get the email only discounts.

Good Luck!


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Oct 222017
 

By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if …

Amazon is a great marketplace and many loyalists start their search on Amazon, not on Google. If you are into ecommerce or planning to get into, consider selling on Amazon. It is a huge marketplace and growing. You benefit from the crowds already on the marketplace looking for products – just like opening a shop in a busy mall. You get in front of people who are already there, shopping with credit card in hand.

Here are 7 tips that will help you succeed on amazon.

  1. Have a Great product. Be unique. Sell your own product so you don’t have to compete with others for the same product. If you are trying to sell something from another manufacturer, you may end up competing with scores of others who are also selling the same. That forces a severe margin crunch and you may make sales but not much profit.
  2. Set your listings correctly. Make sure the Title accurately reflects what you are selling. Select the correct category. Use keywords that customers are likely to use when searching for such a product.
  3. Pictures: Upload as many pictures as make sense. Remember people can’t physically touch your products online so make it easy for them to evaluate your products through pictures and text.
  4. Post FAQ on products. If you anticipate people will have quite a few questions, answer them beforehand in the product descriptions so prospects don’t have to wait for you to answer questions through the Amazon messaging system.
  5. Talk about reviews. Amazon forbids merchants from asking customers to write reviews. However; if you encourage people to read reviews, your customers may start leaving their own reviews.
  6. Don’t ignore international. A good bit of ecommerce sales are from overseas customers. Make sure you have shipping charges setup for international. Welcome them and make it easy for them to buy from you.
  7. Start slow. Everything has a learning curve. Start with one or two products, see how the response is and then add other products if you can manage the additional sales.
  8. Bonus Tip: If you have thousands of products or you sell on multiple marketplaces, it becomes very difficult to synchronize inventory manually across multiple marketplaces. If that is your situation, use a service like UMP ( short for UploadMyProducts.com). They pull inventory from your ecommerce database and pushes it to Amazon, eBay, Walmart etc. several times a day.

If you don’t have the time to do all that, outsource it to companies like InterloperInc to do it for you.

Marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Rakuten and Walmart.com are big players. Make good use of them. They all have their loyal customer bases who frequent them and do your best to get in front of them. The more people see your products, the better your chances of making a sale.


Help with Amazon listings, SEO, setup and automation

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Sep 172017
 

The practice of outsourcing certain tasks or processes to outside firms is becoming more common to small businesses but it’s not a new concept to big businesses. Big businesses have been outsourcing complete departments to third party providers, some overseas, some local. Let’s examine some of the key benefits of outsourcing for small businesses…

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Sep 122017
 

Many of you are using Hootsuite for managing your social media presence. Hootsuite is a good tool and can help you bring some order to your social life. Many of you have questions that are hard to figure out beforehand and sometimes prevent you from upgrading your account. Hopefully these answers will help you make your decision.

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