Slide Show from Others Photos

Wow. It is amazing what can be done online. I found a page that has someone's collection of photos of old farm tractors, which can be pasted in here as a slide show. It did work, but I took it out. It didn't work in Safari, only in Firefox (I'm a Mac guy, if I haven't said that before.) I'm not sure about the concept. Is it "fair" for me to use a bunch of pictures from someone unknown? Shouldn't he get something for it? Or is name recognition enough? Have to think about that.

Meanwhile, eBay listings go a lot slower than hoped for. December was the best month yet, per the December sales report. Not enough to live on, but showing the right kind of progress. Christmas sales maybe? I know some of them were for Christmas, but January has continued along at a pretty close pace, so I'm not sure. Some of the emails from customers are really rewarding. If only that could pay the electric bill.

I just went through some more recent magazines my wife was throwing out. Some of the ads use the new technologies in neat ways. I'm going to see how well those sell. Perhaps age isn't everything. Many of my customers have said that the ad they bought was because they had owned the subject of the ad. Maybe more people (around today, that is) owned a 1998 watch than a 1943? Report to follow.

Have a great day.

Accomplishments for 2007, Goals for 2008

There were three huge accomplishments in 2007: Started the eBay business, quit smoking and read the Bible in one year.

Of the three, I think reading the Bible in one year was the most satisfying. The damage has been done from 50 years of smoking, so there probably isn't much good to come from that except saving money, which isn't a totally bad result.

This blog is supposed to be about the eBay business, but some of these other things have an effect. The Bible puts everything of this world in perspective. Don't sweat the small stuff, just be sure it doesn't keep you from getting your reward later. Maybe I'll start a Bible study blog someday. Chuck Missler is a great example. Should I even hope to ever know what he knows? Probably not. But trying could be fun.

I spent a lot of December thinking about which way to go with the eBay business. As I said, selling a whole bunch of postcards didn't net me much. As I sat looking at the eBay Market Research results for ads a couple days ago, the light bulb seemed to come on. For both auctions and stores, sales of ads were about 10% of completed items. I don't find a reliable completed figure in my Selling Manager Pro stuff—it does not include store items which are listed as good til cancelled And at this point, it doesn't seem worth the data to go about relisting every ad after its 30 days. Some days there are more than 100. Wouldn't leave me any time to count my money.

However, the number of items listed and the sold figure looked to be about 10%. Turned out it wasn't, but the volume of listings had been a bit over 3000 for a couple months, and the number sold had remained constant. Tripling it is the goal, so maybe tripling the listings will do it. That is the immediate goal, should take a couple months to get the number of ads up there. Will shoot for 6000 first, then 9000. The 9000 would put the store in the top 10 or so on eBay for ads. Postcards will be a secondary interest for now. They are fun, but the economics so far are not. Reports will follow.

Happy New Year, all.