This economy stinks. It's a good idea to cut down on anything you can, and make a few sacrifices. Even if you save the amount of money that your cable/internet bill costs in a month, hey that's something!
One thing to note is that I still want quality food even though I also want savings. Pre-packaged food, stuff made in factories, and microwave meals may be cheap. But you'll be sacrificing your health with all those chemicals and foods lacking nutrition. I've seen a few TV shows where people talk about how they packed on so much weight, and very often, it's because they were low on money and starting buying really cheap food and McDonalds.
It's not worth sacrificing your health. You'll pay for it in energy and mood, and you'll pay for it at the doctor's office or hospital. So be good to yourself!
Here are some of my money-saving ideas. I welcome yours in the comments section!
1) Coffee! Lots of us get coffee out on the road, and overpay for it. Every time I get a decaf soy cinnamon dolce at Starbucks, it runs me almost $5. My local health food store has DELICIOUS decaf french vanilla coffee for $7.99/lb, ground or beans. I found CoffeeMate's new cinnamon bun flavour. And hey, it's a good copy. Each cup probably costs me pennies. If you can cut say 3 Starbucks drinks out per week, you will save around $15 per week.
Another coffee idea is to look for the places that give deals... free coffee if you come in with their mug. Discounts if you come in with any mug. Brueggers Bagels has an offer right now. Pay $109-149 (depending on location) for a special mug and card, and get free unlimited coffee in it (they charge extra for flavoured syrups). So if you get a cup of coffee every workday, and you can stop here and use this mug, each cup of coffee may have cost you around 50 cents. Probably still cheaper to make your own and put it in your own damn mug, but if you like the "getting coffee outside my house" feeling, this should do it on a good budget.
2) Meat on sale. My local supermarkets tend to put their meat on sale when it's closer to its "use by" date. The meat's still good. And it was packaged by the butcher, so hopefully it's better than some of the weird things I've seen factories do with packaged meats. I've seen good cuts of meat get sold for under $3/pound. You have to use it soon, but these are great places to save sometimes half or more off the regular price. Maybe you could save $10 per week.
3) Definitely cook more often. When I think about what a plate of pasta costs in a restaurant, I tend to lose my mind. :) I'm not even that fond of buying sauce in a jar as I think I can make something better and healthier. A pound of pasta is what, 89 cents? A dollar? I like spelt pasta as it's healthier and tastes great. That's $2.70 per box, so it does cost a bit more. Then what can you do? Make easy sauces with tomato or olive oil bases. Get a giant can of diced tomatoes. Get some fresh or frozen veg. Get some fresh garlic and onions. You can even get a jarred alfredo sauce if you want to add a little cheesiness. Or don't since that's just calories.
Pasta and sauce for your whole family? Maybe $10 or so! And healthy and homemade and EASY. You stick all the sauce things in a giant pan, covered, to sweat it out together. Fresh mushrooms can be great in there. Spinach. Maybe you got some chicken breasts on sale, and can cut in a few breasts for the family to share. Healthy, tasty, easy. Dinner out for 4 people after tax and tip? Easily $30 if not way more. Save $15-20 PER MEAL.
4) Freeze! I like to make a giant thing of pasta sauce, break it into smaller containers, freeze some and fridge some. Pasta may not freeze so well, but many things do. Look for books on freezer cooking as those will have recipes and the how-tos for freezing and unfreezing.
5) Kids don't have to eat crap. When I came home from high school, every day, I boiled water. Put in pasta. Threw Velveeta on it. Fried up some ground beef. Made my own beefy mac and cheese. No microwaves. Is that the healthiest meal known to man, no. But your kids don't HAVE to microwave everything. Not everything has to come from a factory. Not everything has to come from a drive through window. They CAN learn to cook. They can learn to cook things that have SOME nutritional value.
Those are some money-saving tips on food while not sacrificing your health. I hope to have more entries with money-saving tips in other life areas. :)
I made this last weekend, and I hope you guys will like it!
Take your turkey breast meat. Tear it nice and small, or get it in the food processor on low so it's not so damn dry and chunky.
Get that in a bowl. Add mayo until it's paste-y, and would stay on a sandwich all huddled together. Dry turkey? More mayo. :)
Now how this is spiced is the key! Here is what I added to mine:
Yellow curry powder. Zing!
Paprika
Lime pepper. It's pepper with some lime crystals. Zing!
Chipotle sauce. The best one is the Búfalo brand, which I'm lucky enough to have in my local supermarket here in Tucson, AZ. It's just chipotle sauce, nothing else in there. So it's smoky and a bit spicy, but not painful. Don't add too much. The dominant flavour will be the curry.
Best to let this sit overnight in the fridge, even though it's good right away. But the flavours will really combine over night, and it's a nice, moist turkey salad with an international zing!
I am still an eBay Education Specialist, and I got this email on 17 Nov 08:
Hello Instructors, We are excited to announce that the updated Basics of
Selling version 6 materials will be available in the next 6-8 weeks! As the
completion date gets closer, you will receive an e-mail that will provide you
with all of the details.
That broke my heart.
eBay has redeveloped materials NOW but we won't have them for 6-8 weeks. By then, there will be other things going on. New changes. Do any of us think that eBay won't announce more changes, new things they're testing, or new elements in Best Match in January or February?
So just as I'm getting these materials, chances are that they will be outdated. That breaks my heart for Education Specialists trying to teach classes. And it breaks my heart for people who want to learn eBay, but can't seem to get current info at the right time.
That's why we built http://community.rocketplace.com. Shhh, it's pre-launch, but you can join now. :) This will help people keep up with eBay changes. That's our goal.
With Microsoft offering the Live Cash Back promo, we are putting our design and consulting package as well as our consulting-only package on eBay. Get 25% off by walking through some steps. Also have a PayPal coupon from eBay? You can use that to to save even more!
Step 1: Go to www.live.com and search for "Business Strategy." Your search results might look like this:
See that first sponsored search results that says that you can buy Strategy on eBay and get 25% off? Click that.
You'll then get over 15,000 eBay items in search results for "strategy." Find ours towards the top because we listed it with Featured Plus. That should put it among the handful of items at the top.
Not there? Search for more words in the title, like "business selling strategy" without the quotes. Just those three words in an eBay search. You should then get all of our eBay items.
Find it! Buy it! Pay with PayPal! Get $200 back from Microsoft later on through the Cash Back programme.
Over the last 6 months, we've been watching something strange absolutely not unfolding. :)
Well first, we saw one "design" company use a computerised system to basically auto-generate cookie-cutter, just about the same for everybody eBay listing templates. You have to pay for the design, which seems weird to me since they all look the same to me, and then you have to pay monthly so that your listings continue to render with what they sold you. Quite the racket. :)
Then, we saw lots of companies start doing the same thing. We saw listings on websites where people wanted to find Asian programmers to build them a computerised system like the other company has. We even saw some of these "programmer wanted" listing coming from the STAFF of the other design company. I can only assume people don't like working there, and would like to do this on their own. :)
Then, eBay talked to us about their Active Content Strategy. The idea there is that there is some coding people are putting into listings that is or can be malicious. eBay's plan is to basically start blocking certain types of coding and scripting so that nothing malicious can go on the site.
That means automatically-generated templates wouldn't really work any more. If eBay is blocking the code, then you just can't do it. You could do it as some sort of Flash thing, but then none of your information would show up in title and description searches.
And this means that everything all these companies are auto-generating will stop working. You will have to replace those templates with regular old not-generated-on-the-fly templates. All of your items. That's a lot of work. And this company will probably charge you for the pleasure of fixing a mess we knew to not even get into. Hey, we could have built a system like that, but I don't have the cojones to sell you on something I know is going to be blocked in a few months.
eBay Stores are changing too. I am under the impression that these heavily scripted and so-called Advanced eBay Stores will also be killed. More on that when I know more, which should be in a few weeks.
But that means that you paid a company probably over $1000 for something that's just going to stop working. You'll have to pay them again to get something that's compliant as I doubt they'll give it to all their customers for free.
So may I suggest hiring us. :) We don't put out clients into trouble like that. We know what's coming. We are always compliant. Because we go further than just design, we have an incredible track record. No other company can show the results we get with eBay sellers. Plus we give $500 off to anybody dumping another company's paid design to get one from us. So it's win-win-win. :)
My last few posts have been about how I think Best Match is really hurting good sellers. eBay claims Best Match works, but compared to what? We have NO idea if some other way might work better because they're not testing another way as far as I know. So compared to nothing else, it's a success. :)
eBay also thinks Best Match is working because shoppers don't re-sort search results very often. If eBay is going to just go by numbers, we have to give them numbers. In all of my shopping on eBay lately, I have re-sorted search results by Price + shipping: lowest first. That undoes Best Match, and let's me start seeng who has what for what price.
Re-sort your search results. If you're reading this, you probably don't just sell on eBay. You probably buy on eBay. Or you shop. Or you shop just to see what competitors are doing. Re-sort your results. And then buy something. :) Unless you love Best Match and want to show eBay that it works and leads to sales!
Let's start with eBay's standards for being a great seller. 98% positive feedback. No DSR under 4.6. And to turn 4.6 into a percentage (out of 100%), it becomes 92%. Any one rating under a 30-day average of 4.6, you are heading for being disadvantaged for being a bad seller. At eBay, a test score under 92 starts to be a failing grade.
Best Match. At eBay's webinar 2 weeks ago, I asked what percentage of shoppers re-sort their search results so that they are NOT using Best Match. I was told that I can publicly say that "most" shoppers use Best Match. OK, I can do that. The exact percentage of shopper who re-sort search results is confidential, and I will publicly say most shoppers are staying with Best Match and not re-sorting. Because of that, you have to slant your eBay strategy for Best Match because that is by far the dominant behaviour of shoppers.
But "most" could be anything over 50%. It could be 95%. Who can say without eBay being open about the exact figure.
How many people have to stay with Best Match for it to be considered "performing"? 98% like feedback? 92% like the DSR threshhold? Even four out of five dentists is 80%, and Trident has been using that as a major selling point for what feels like decades. If 1 out of 5 shoppers re-sorted to get away from Best Match, would we still say it's working? 1 out of 7 shoppers? 1 out of 10 shoppers?
Jeez, we've all been so trained to see anything but near perfection in an eBay SELLER as a fatal flaw. When's the last time you bought from someone with feedback as "awful" as 95% positive? How about DSRs around 4.4 or 4.5? We've been taught that if your DSRs are there, you are a potential loser who maybe shouldn't be allowed to sell on eBay. Then I'd like to hold eBay features up to the same standards for failure and performance.
If 1 out of 7 people shopping on eBay are looking for a different experience that what eBay serves them by default, then is what they're being served working? If 1 out of 7 of your buyers wanted something different than the experience you're giving them, would you feel that that were enough people that you'd have to take a look at what you're doing and possibly change? If 1 out of 7 people told you the doctor you go to is bad at what he does, would that be enough to make you think there are a lot of people thinking your doctor stinks?
If eBay is calling Best Match a success now, I'd like to know when they call it a failure... especially when it doesn't seem to be tested against anything else. So hey, compared to pretty much nothing else, Best Match is a success. Well, I think if it's not what shoppers want, and sales are down and/or people are re-sorting to have another experience, then it's not working. Something COULD work better. Are we testing that something? Is there a department at eBay in charge of finding what's better than Best Match? Can we get Disruptive Innovation involved? :)
I am one of the last people I know still passionate about the eBay platform and where eBay could be going, but I am so concerned. I hope that someone at eBay will think about this, and if anything is not really working, please change it. Please be open to testing other ideas.
eBay's Best Match is designed to show eBay shoppers the best items from the best people. It hasn't changed my shopping habits on eBay. It seems to mostly make things really hard for good sellers who are trying to do the right thing. I'm hearing reports that growth on eBay is slower than that of other shopping sites. So is Best Match working? eBay will say of course it is, but to what are they comparing it? :)
Best Match uses a secret algorithm that seems to change from time to time. Your item is placed in search results based on things like (in no particular order):
Your DSRs.
Whether you've been suspended lately.
How many disputes you have.
If you're using a 30-day fixed price format with multiple quantity.
If you're using free shipping.
Number of watchers.
If your multiple quantity listing has sold any quantity recently. How recent? Can't say as it's a moving window of an unknown number of days.
Pricing of the item.
Geographic location (ie: searches on eBay Canada are supposed to feature Canadian sellers since Canadians buying from Canadians can often be faster and easier)
Number of pictures (really?)
And those are just the ones we KNOW about. And those are just the ones that are true as I'm writing this. Who can say what'll be true in weeks or months.
But one thing we've noticed based on calls with clients is that you could have all but one of those PERFECT, and the one you DON'T have perfect will dump you on page 3 of search results. Buh-bye. You could have great DSRs, no disputes, not have been suspended, listing FP30 with free shipping, have watchers, and have a good price. You could be the BEST seller eBay has of this type of item. And you could be buried in search results because you didn't list a multiple quantity in your FP30 listing.
The result of Best Match will be to limit what shoppers can get to. If good sellers are being hidden in search, and seeing sales drop because of lack of visibility, it's hard to get out of that downward spiral. That seller may have to stop selling on eBay, and go where the sales can be made. This will leave eBay with fewer sellers and fewer items. Newer sellers will have no CLUE what's going on, and won't be able to even get out of the eBay gate without working with a company like us. Good for us! But scary for those who want to be eBay sellers.
I have an idea on how to send that message to eBay. Read tomorrow. :)
I've been thinking about the automobile industry, especially since my father-in-law visited from Ireland a few weeks ago. I was telling him how AWESOME it was that my 2007 Toyota 4Runner SR5 (V6) gets 24 miles to the gallon, even around town. He looked at me like I had 6 heads. Evidently, in Ireland, few cars get UNDER 40 mpg. Here in the US? Nearly zero roadworthy vehicles get 40 mpg or over.
And before that, I had watched "Who Killed The Electric Car," which will make a tree-hugger want to burn a Ford plant down.
Guess what.
If I resist innovation,
If I try to stay the same,
If I try to force my clients to just keep buying the same thing,
If I resist my clients' desires to expand,
If my greatest innovation over the last 10 years seems to be that my car plays MP3 CDs,
If I squish new technologies,
I should NOT be surprised when my business starts failing. Stagnation and refusal to innovate or evolve basically NEVER works.
Even Coca-Cola doesn't rest on their popularity and sales. They are always coming out with new drinks they hope you will drink. Wendy's comes out with new things you could be eating. Your cable company has products and services they didn't have 2 years ago.
So what to do with the auto industry? I like what Seth Godin said in his blog post. Basically, I'm not for spending that money bailing out private companies who made bad business decisions and didn't innovate. Since the 1970s, when oil prices became the type of thing everyday Americans thought about, we have needed better cars... more efficient, alternative fuel sources, smaller and lighter cars that are very safe. What did we get? Smaller cars for a few minutes, but not known for their safety. Then SUVs and bigger and bigger things... like pick from three models of Hummer for your 3-mile trip to Walgreens.
Some people need an SUV or pickup truck for work or moving things around. I'm not going to take that away from you. But I think families should have a second car that is aimed at fuel efficiency. So instead of going out to dinner in your Ford F350, surely there is something out there that'll get you to and from dinner requiring less gas and causing less pollution. The person who drives to work or the train station, and the car stays there all day? That could be a Toyota Yaris. It could be something small with good gas mileage. It could be a bicycle. :)
I guess I feel Darwinian about the auto makers. They have been doing the wrong thing for decades. Just watch "Who Killed The Electric Car," and you will not want a bailout for them. I'm not for the jobs that will be lost, but I believe that forward-thinking companies will create new jobs in 2009. No matter which candidate you wanted to win, change has to come next year. New jobs have to be created.
The first couple of people who commented offered one possibility: sellers aren't searching the site as much as they used to, so that traffic has decreased. The economy making people do less shopping is another good reason.
I'd like to offer some of my ideas on why eBay may see fewer page views.
What if Best Match is working? If eBay shoppers are viewing fewer items before deciding to bid or buy, then that would lead to fewer page views.
More API-based shopping tools. From eBay desktop to shopping with your mobile phone, I am wondering if those new technologies are decreasing page views. You CAN shop eBay without hitting much of the site. Do the page views include WAP browsing? I don't know! I'd imagine they don't include usage of tools like eBay Desktop or nabit.
More third-party tools being used for eBay research. You used to see how items did by searching on the site. Now, you use Terapeak, HammerTap, or Vendio Research for your info.
eBay advertising is down from previous years. I remember years when you could barely watch a few hours of TV without seeing some eBay ads. Right now, I can't watch 15 minutes of TV without 3 Wal-Mart ads. So maybe this year, with Wal-Mart ads up, and people concerned about the economy, people are not thinking eBay as much as we'd like them to think about it!
Many sellers I know are also eBay buyers. If the sellers are frustrated with eBay and leaving, or got suspended, then they are unlikely to also be shopping and buying.
As my commenters below reminded me, eBay also dropped out of a lot of Google search results. You used to get HEAPS of eBay choices when doing searches. Now, eBay is not getting the same placement in Google. I can only guess that Google tweaked their Best Match, and eBay got pushed to page 3. :)
Lower page views in a vacuum don't sound THAT awful, especially when eBay is trying to find ways to make shopping faster and easier. The sales figures and the problems sellers are facing... those concern me more!
I'm a frequent eBay shopper. Bought 2 things this week given the PayPal coupons and Microsoft Live Cash Back programme. I've been shopping and buying on eBay since 1998.
This year has been hectic and often upsetting for eBay sellers. From rule changes to things that seemed to change with no announcement to your business being made or broken by Best Match, it's a whole new world. 2007's strategies and ways of treating shoppers and buyers don't work anymore.
So how is shopping and buying different? Well, as someone who has shopped and bought for 10+ years now, here is how I see it.
It's nearly the same. I search for 2G of RAM for my new laptop. I get search results. I look at people's feedback. I look at their location, and how long it'll take for them to ship. I make sure they take PayPal. I read their policies. I read the item to make sure it's as new or used as I think it is. And then I choose to buy.
Same thing I did in 1998. So with ALL of this shuffling and changing, has ANYTHING changed from the point of view of the buyer? I mean, it's not like items got MORE relevant. 2G of RAM is 2G of RAM!
What has changed is that the sellers on page 1 are not there because of the casino-style gamble of "time ending soonest." They are supposedly there because of their good reputation. eBay is trying to improve the trust and satisfaction factors by trying to show me the best sellers, not just relevant items.
But seller #1 on the page isn't necessarily the BEST seller on the page. The #1 item on the page MIGHT be the item other people have bought more than similar items... but that may not be the one I want or need. So I still have to "do my thing" and decide from whom I want to buy. I have my search results set to show the seller user ID, Store name, and feedback info. I DO use that to decide which item I want to see.
So what has changed? I think the only thing that has changed is that statistically speaking, the "bad" sellers are people I'd never see. In theory, they have been suspended or their items have been pushed down. So the items from which I'm choosing on page 1 are from the "best" people.
But is it really worth what we're putting the sellers through? Is it worth all the dolphins being caught in tuna nets? Is it really working when some of the best sellers I know, who have some of the best reputations I've seen, are missing from search results? Is it working when I keep hearing reports that eBay's sales growth is slower than that of other major shopping sites?
I once again call for Best Match to be greatly simplified. I think there is too much going into the algorithm, and eBay is making it too hard for good sellers to sell. They're making it very hard for new sellers to come on the site, understand what's going on, and NOT get themselves suspended or lowered in search. I think the idea of Best Match could make sense, but there are too many pieces in there. Let's look more at that in Monday's blog post. :)
Hi. For those following with my sad saga, I now have two basically brand new laptops. I bought the HP in August to replace a Lenovo I had that had never really worked right. I now have a NEW Lenovo because Lenovo finally woke up and replaced my faulty laptop.
Here is what you would want to know, assume you're as geeky as I am.
HP 6985SE: Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 @ 2GHz, 4G RAM, Windows Vista Ultimate (I upgraded), 250GB hard drive. CD/DVD burner with LightScribe. Trackpad pointing device. 64-bit operating system (came that way). I chose it from Best Buy because I was tired of my faulty Lenovo. It was $999 at the time (plus the Vista upgrade software purchase, which was $70). I chose it because CNET seemed to love it, especially over the other computers in the same class/price range.
Lenovo X200 Tablet: Intel Core 2 Duo L9400 @ 1.86GH. 2G RAM (2 more on the way as I just bought them on eBay). Windows Vista Business, 32-bit. Touchpoint device (the nipple, as I call it) and buttons. No track pad because it's a touch screen tablet. I got the upgraded screen, and the extra Intel Turbo Memory. Lenovo's website will custom build this spec for you for around $2500. I chose it because Lenovo let me spec out a replacement up to my original purchase price on the bad laptop, and I had spent $2500. So I went for something really different than the HP to give Lenovo another chance!
And they're off!
The HP clearly wins for a few things. It seems to be faster, though I'm not sure if adding more RAM to the Lenovo will help there. The screen is BEAUTIFUL and awesome for movies. It has a huge battery, which adds to the weight, but it does get around 5 hrs from a full charge. It feels very nice to use... nice keyboard, nice styling over all. I also got the HP docking station thing, and that makes hooking and unhooking the computer to things like my monitor, keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals REALLY easy.
The Lenovo clearly wins for a few things. The size and weight are great. I doubt this weighs more than 3 pounds with the low-life battery. The screen is nice, the keyboard is your usual comfy keyboard. The ThinkVantage system has function buttons that quickly get me to utilities I use all the time like power manager, going into sleep mode, and presentation mode (telling it to show on my external monitor). I do NOT yet have the Lenovo dock for this model, so right now, hooking and unhooking to peripherals is time-consuming.
The Lenovo is a true laptop. It's on my lap, it's nice and flat, and it weighs NOTHING. The HP has a bulky, funny shaped battery that sort of acts as a stand to make the back higher than the front. But put that on your lap, and it's a ship on a stormy sea. But, the Lenovo's smaller 4-cell battery, which comes with it, only runs for just over 2 hrs on a full charge.
The Lenovo, being 32-bit, meant NO incompatibilities with apps I wanted to use. There are some apps I haven't been able to use on the HP because some companies haven't come out with 64-bit versions or drivers. That has sucked.
The Lenovo, being light and portable, has NO optical drive. If I want to use or burn CDs or DVDs, I have to get an external USB drive. Now that's not the end of the world. I find I DON'T very often use or burn CDs or DVDs. I guess I could always put stuff on my external drive, and have the HP burn it. But if I think I will need that, I've been finding "slim" portable DVD RW DL USB drives for around $80. Not so bad.
Will I use the tablet-ness a lot? I'm not sure yet. I like the touch screen, but am not sure how often I will tap the screen. I know the Lenovo is probably better for travelling as it's SO compact. It's the size of a letter-sized piece of paper, and maybe just over an inch thick when closed. So it really wins for great form and design. It had made me feel that I do NOT want a mini or micro PC. Anything smaller than this is probably really annoying for typing and trying to read words on a screen.
I think right now, it's a tie. I have to see how a movie looks on the Lenovo, but we know it's not a media machine the way they sell the HP laptop to be. The HP even has quick keys on it for media functions. Compare that to the Lenovo having quick keys built in for functionality and more business style things. I'd rather travel with the Lenovo, though I may have to stay close to electricity or get more external batteries.
Now that being said, I probably could have liked the $500 version of the smaller Lenovo without the touch screen if I wanted a compact, lighter, smaller, nearly mini PC. You don't have to spend $2500. My $2500 was already spent, so in replacing the bad laptop, I just decided to get something really unlike the HP. If I had that $2500 back in my pocket, I could have bought 4 laptops. :)
So I will keep using the Lenovo every day for now to see how it goes, especially once I get the extra RAM. I tend to be function over form, but I need to make sure that the Lenovo's function is excellent. I need to be impressed by that, especially after a bump in the road with a lemon.
I had an interesting call last Wednesday. A guy who knew very little about selling on eBay wanted someone to "wrap" an template around his items. He seemed to think this was done through the eBay Store.
I had to explain there is nothing on the eBay website that wraps custom templates around your items. I also had to explain that it's best to keep templates as templates... if you ever need a global change to policies and info, items that have the design built-in will ALL have to changed by hand. I know sellers hate this!
He then told me he wanted the listings to look like his website. His website looked like every eCommerce website on the internet right now. A logo on the top left that was mostly his name, not much design. Navigation along the top, categories down the left, big colourful squares in the main area pushing people to different items.
Well, it just looked like everything, and it really had no real design or mood. It just looked the same as so many sites I've seen... and he's telling me he wants something that looks like that on eBay. I told him I'd like to design something better than that for eBay because eBay shoppers are very visual, and need something interesting to keep them there. His website looks like everybody's else's, and for marketing, branding, and uniqueness, I'd like to see something that has more personality.
He basically hung up on me. :)
So let me say this to everybody. eBay announced in Jan 2007 that their internal research showed that a listing where a shopper felt a sense of fun, excitement, and personality was nearly TWICE as likely to get that shopper's bid or purchase. That means that the design CAN make your sale. We knew this, but eBay saying it was nice.
If you have a fairly plan or run-of-the-mill, looks like everybody else's website, I am happy to match things like colour scheme, fonts, and logo. But I will probably pretty much insist that your eBay design have more personality, more mood, maybe even a "theme" or story so that we can capitalise on how much design affects a shopper.
Don't hang up on me when I tell you this. I am trying to HELP. :) I could design something really bland, but why? You're overpaying me for bland! All the great strategies in the world won't help you if people get to a listing that turns them off. I'm just trying to HELP. Please take the help!
I have a problem. I am emailing clients and people on our mailing list important things like what's going on with eBay's changes. Hey, that's important, especially when they may not be getting that information anywhere else.
A bunch of people don't get it. The spam filter eats it. A bunch of people don't open the email from me no matter HOW urgent I've made some of those email titles. And a bunch of people unsubscribe.
What happens next? Clients ring my freaking phone off the hook wanting to know what is going on with eBay! Why are their listings not showing up in search? Did eBay just install some sort of change because sales are down? Or my favourite, what are DSRs?
HEY, if you'd read my freaking emails, you'd know! I am not keeping this information secret! I am TRYING to get this out there, and you don't want to take the time to read the emails. OK, don't read the emails.
My next attempt to get the word out is to run http://community.rocketplace.com. It will have fresh info nearly every work day on what is going on on eBay, and what we suggest you do in response to that. You don't have to read emails, but hey, at least make our site part of your morning papers. You will then be informed, and I won't have to worry that you didn't read my emails.
We'll also be putting a lot of our advice along with some other experts writing columns in the VIP area. So instead of having 20 30-min phone calls with 20 clients who want to know what just happened, we'll be pointing everybody to the VIP area of our new website, RocketPlace Community.
Get your answers there. Ignore my emails if you must! But you will need to get your eBay information SOMEWHERE!!!
I have a bunch of clients who are very religious Jews. Many are in NY. Many are Hasidic. Many observe Shabbat.
For those of you not familiar with Shabbat, the short version is that you are not supposed to work from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. So you don't travel or cook or do anything that might be seen as work. That certainly includes conducting businesses, which is why many of these businesses are closed from Friday afternoon, but may be open Sunday.
One of my clients said that his rabbi was concerned that having items on eBay through Shabbat was making him NOT observant of Shabbat. The rabbi felt that while people can see these things for sale and buy them, this is business being done. The rabbi suggested that my client end all of his eBay items on Friday afternoon, and list them again after Saturday's sunset.
Ugh. Imagine the effort. The fees. The death of Recent Sales. Ugh.
I asked another Hasidic client, knowing he's quite religious, how he keeps his items on eBay through Shabbat. He said he had to discuss this with his rabbi too, but his rabbi had a different opinion than the first rabbi. Here is how my client put it to me...
If you own stocks, do you have to sell your stocks before Friday sunset and then buy those stocks again?
Your money might make money in after-hours trading.
If you own a business that supplies nurses to hospitals, you might have to send a nurse to a hospital on a Saturday. Your business generated revenue on Shabbat even if you did no work.
If you go to the store and you take milk out of the case, do you own the milk yet? He says you don't own the milk until you go to the counter, pay for it, he puts it in a bag, and you leave with the bag.
My client who lists through Shabbat says he doesn't feel the item is sold until he is working again, sees the money in the account, puts the item in the box, and sends it out.
Which makes me ask this. If you ship an item to someone, and they open it Saturday because the post office delivers it on Saturday, does this go against Shabbat?
Sure, it's a touchy thing, and different rabbis and people will see it differently. But I liked the way my 2nd client put it. You don't sell your stocks for Shabbat! :)
I just had an issue trying to connect my Windows Mobile phone with my new laptop, which is Windows Vista Business. I had different but weird issues under Windows Vista Ultimate on my other laptop.
The problem this time was that I plugged in my mobile phone, which is an HTC Mogul aka the 6800 for Sprint, and for some wacky reason, Vista saw the device as an MP3 player. It only wanted to sync it with Windows Media Player. It kept telling me it was a media device. It was frustrating.
I searched and couldn't find an answer. Once I had a stinky interaction trying to get support from Microsoft, I ended up in a Google search that dumped me into forums.microsoft.com. So here is the answer:
That is the answer to any problem you are having with Vista and Windows Mobile phones evidently. :) You have to reinstall the Windows Mobile Device Center aka WMDC, and THEN your computer is ready to see your phone as a phone.
Whew! It's working now. I'm mucho happy. From time to time, I've put Windows Mobile Phone solutions here, and I get emails nearly weekly from people who stumble on my solutions when searching. I hope I've been able to help more people!
This is a prediction. I have no inside info. Nobody has said anything to me. This is a total guess. But it makes sense.
eBay's Community team is gone. Either fired or reassigned. Even Griff is now part of "Seller Experience." The Events team is evidently mostly or totally gone. eBay Live was cancelled for 2009, and the "regional events" have not really materialised.
My prediction is that the Education department will go next. I'm not saying I want it to! I'm just saying I think that is the next logical change the current eBay administration is likely to make.
The problem is that eBay is changing weekly. Materials printed on paper for the Education Specialists who teach these classes are basically outdated by the time they're approved for printing. :)
The EdSpecs are mostly good people doing their best, but I've found that some are not always up on what's going on on eBay. Are they up on this stuff enough to be able to tell their audience about all the factors that go into Best Match? Why to list FP 30 with free shipping and multiple quantity?
You can't go old school here. You can't teach a class that says HEY! Just take a picture of your watch and list it on eBay! Those students may quickly kill their DSRs... or they might not list correctly, end up with NO visibility in search, and end up with few to no sales. I am not sure how the EdSpecs would be up on this info... I'm an EdSpec, and I didn't see any emails nor was I mailed anything that made sure I knew about these more advanced strategies and eBay changes.
I think eBay will realise that really new people really can't be taught, at least not like this. eBay selling is no longer easy for newbies. It's way too complicated. Many people pick the eBay Store format because it's cheapest, not realising that they'll basically never be found.
Seminars go out of date as soon as they're given. Books go out of date by the time the publisher approves them. Conferences go out of date by the time I'm standing up to give you info. You think the Video Professor's eBay CD understands the Best Match algorithm and explains that?!?!?! I think that eBay education is going to have to really evolve.
We're going to evolve it. We're starting with a website for daily eBay education and advice, which is at http://community.rocketplace.com. We'll be running more webinars and call-in talk shows. And we'll be running fairly frequent completely online virtual conferences. No more spending piles of money to travel to something that will offer info that's out of date a month later.
Keep watching for our announcements. And sorry to the eBay Education department if I should be right that a lot of old-style eBay education just isn't viable anymore. :(
I am surveying the carnage, and I am wondering if this is a depression. People on TV make it sound like MAYBE we're in a recession or "correction." But I think this is a depression. Wikipedia defines an economic depression as follows:
Considered a rare but extreme form of recession, a depression is characterized by abnormal increases in unemployment, restriction of credit, shrinking output and investment, numerous bankruptcies, reduced amounts of trade and commerce, as well as highly volatile relative currency value fluctuations, mostly devaluations. Price deflation or hyperinflation are also common elements of a depression.
Well hey, I think that sounds just about right. Lots of unemployment. Credit restrictions, oh yeah. Credit freeze was what I heard on CNN for days. Shrinking investment? Yeah, I've seen the stock market.
Bankruptcies? Sure, we're losing banks! Of course, Bush must have seen this coming, and signed a tougher bankruptcy law. It's evidently harder to go through bankruptcy now than a few years ago, which I guess means more people stuck with debts they have no chance of paying.
Reduced commerce? Oh yeah! Even in the holiday season, shopping seems to be down. PayPal recently ran a survey that, among other things, pointed at people spending less for the holidays AND fewer people choosing to travel.
Volatile currency? I'll say yes to that. Over the past 12 months, one Euro has cost between $1.23 and $1.60, which is 30% higher than $1.23. The British Pound has ranged from $1.52 to $2.12, which is nearly 40% higher. Those are pretty big fluctuations. When I was in England in May 2008, it was just about $2 to £1. Now, it's around $1.56, which is nearly IDENTICAL to the exchange rates I paid on my last 2 UK trips in October 2002 and summer 1995. That's currency stability... nearly the same exchange rate in 1995 and 2002.
Price deflation, yes. Gas prices are dropping, luckily. Vacation prices are dropping because they can't get anybody to go anywhere. Most mall stores I see are running HUGE sales. Not the usual small percent off. I've seen sales like something that might normally be priced $20 each on sale for 2 for $15. People want to turn their inventory into some sort of cash, even if they're losing some money.
So how are we NOT in a depression? If the TV pundits say we're not, does that mean we're not? I think we are, and want to know how regular people are going to get the help they need. If you can't pay your mortgage or afford to send your kid to a decent school, then a few hundred dollars tax credit won't help.
Free Webinar on eBay's Changes, What They Made Public This Week, and What To Do About It!
The
headline above says it all! This is just a quick email to let everybody
know we're holding a webinar on Friday. eBay is publicly announcing
some things on Thursday, and as they released it as a webinar just for
Titanium and Diamond PowerSellers, not everybody will get the news.
We want to make sure you know!
Come hear what's going on, and what we think you should be doing about it!
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/486538658
Also,
to stay on top of eBay's changes, check out our new site JUST about
eBay's changes... we will be updating it just about daily.
http://community.rocketplace.com.
I was trying to figure out the other day how some properties' values have just tanked, leaving people owing more on mortgages than their property is worth. I am sure there are many reasons for this, but as I drove around my area, I thought of one odd reason.
There is a neighbourhood near me that's just lovely. It had an amazing view of the mountains. Pretty much every house in that neighbourhood had a great mountain view. The neighbourhood is like a mile from the foothils of the mountains, and there was nothing in between but State Road 77, which was set kind of low in the landscape.
Until the town decided to build a million square foot mall in the space in between the neighbourhood and Route 77. You read that right. These people now have all kinds of giant buildings in front of their mountain view. Many of the stores are off to the left, but there is one thing the planning people surely didn't think of or care about:
Parking lot lights.
Part of the reason things are so scenic here in Oro Valley, AZ, especially as it gets dark, is that we have very few street lights. Many neighbourhoods don't have street lights. And with little to no ambient light, the landscape and sky are really vivid, even at night. You can see not just the biggest stars, and not just the major constellations. You can see thousands of tiny stars in between the brighter stars. And the mountain at night is amazing and dramatic.
Except for this great neighbourhood, which now sees parking lot lights from their formerly-million-dollar homes. I can't imagine these homes are worth anywhere close to what they had been. I looked at buying a house there, and most of the value was the view, and the things the homeowner had done to maximise it, like a 2nd floor deck. Now? That deck has a GREAT view of parking lot lights. Hundreds of them. And they seem to be on ALL NIGHT. I drove by at 1am on a Monday morning (Sunday night)... lights on.
This was within someone's control. This wasn't just the housing market starting to tumble. Someone controlled this, and out of greed, decided to build this mall here. I can't imagine what it's done to the people who were trying to sell, just bought there, or wanted to just live and enjoy their mountain view.
Bought a pound of ground beef. Not that the butcher set out in the supermarket. Something pre-packaged. Got lazy.
Took it home. Noticed the side of the label said, "Product of USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico." Huh? It's ONE POUND of ground beef? How did ALL those countries get involved?
I think this is the McDonalds Effect. They say that each hamburger has been from 1000 cows from lots of countries. I guess someone else is doing this. That's not cool. I need to remember to not eat this. After tonight. :)
We know that problems for eBay sellers in 2008 have come in two main flavours: not know what the heck eBay has changed, and not knowing what to do about those changes (and when!). We now present the solution. http://community.rocketplace.com
Our new website called RocketPlace Community (RPC) is a Ning.com website that allows people to join our "community" and interact with each other. We have discussion forums, webinars, podcasts, news feeds, and more. Information and columns will come from experts. Tired of discussion forums filled with angry villagers with torches who never answer your question or put you down for even asking it? We're not allowing that crap here. If you need help, you will get help, and anybody looking to just be negative and grumpy can go away.
We will be staying on top of every eBay announcement, development, and change, even including the small tweaks eBay has been making to what does well inside Best Match. Hey, without knowing what the Spotlight Strategies (strategies du jour) are, how can you keep that high position in Best Match!
RPC has some content that's open to the public, and then there are discussions, recurring columns, events, and more that are for VIP members only. You can learn how to become a VIP on our "membership" page.
Here is a video to get you more acquainted with what is on the RPC site. This video was shot the day after it was launched, so just know that we are adding content just about every day. We know the site's no good to you unless it's current, and questions are being answered daily.
I fell asleep early last night after having gotten up at 4am to vote. Once John King on CNN was showing how it was nearly statistically impossible for McCain to win, even if we "gave" him a huge bunch of states, I figured the only way McCain would win would be if Cheney pressed the "steal election" button. :)
Looks like that didn't happen. Now that's change!
So now what? Well, I hope that the country will come together and work towards fixing things. We all agree on the problems. I think at this point, few people are happy with the economy (other than liquor stores), few people are really thrilled about more war, few people are happy with home values and foreclosures, few people want to avoid finding new/better/cleaner energy sources, and few people are happy with how the rest of the world sees us. So other than the Libertarians, who evidently want most or all of government disbanded, we all want roughly the same thing.
Both candidates stood for change, and in some cases, those changes were similar. In some cases, not. Obama admitted he'd raise some taxes, which I think you HAVE to. To get out from this debt and deficit, I think people have to be taxed. "Read my lips, no new taxes" is just not going to work as a promise or in reality. Some of the money to bail out our government has to come from us. We don't know WHERE that money will be spent, so both sides would be taxing, spending, and redistributing wealth.
See, blues and reds aren't THAT different! Both candidates are friends to Israel. Both want to help the middle class. Both want to see health care more affordable for people. Both want to try to undo a lot of what's been going on the last 8 years. And if McCain had stayed the guy I used to crack up at on The Daily Show years back, I think he could have won... I started wanting to vote for him for President back then! Palin's a great conversation piece, but not ready for major leadership just yet. If McCain had picked Hillary Clinton, I think they would have won, and a bi-partisan adminstration would have been truly maverick. :)
Obama gains nothing by messing things up further. It's his job to fix everything, and he's inheriting quite the steaming pile! He didn't sign up for an easy job, and he knows that forty-something % of the country didn't even want him to sign up. Maybe more if you consider some Hillary supporters voted blue as the better of two choices. He's going to be under a microscope, especially with the whole history-book-weight of our First Black President. He has to improve the country. He has no room to mess this one up. It's Jackie Robinson all over again... he has to hit a zillion home runs and prove a lot of things to a lot of people.
Bush may have been on auto-pilot for most of his second term. I'm not sure we even SAW Dick Cheney for most of the second term. Obama doesn't get to do that. He has to assemble a team of experts who will make sure things get FIXED. It will take time, but it HAS to be done.
I just hope people who didn't vote for Obama give him a chance. Let his actions show you who he is. I'll be watching too. But forget the ads, blog posts, and other things that hey just may not be true. Obama may NOT be having tea parties with terrorists and brushing up his policies to advance Marxism and Communism.
I can only say let's ALL give him a chance to make our country better. If you stand in his way, you stand in the way of the possibility of good change, and what will you have accomplished?
Do you Twitter? Well I live on it. I use it more than Facebook at this point. Read it more than blogs.
Pierre Omidyar, Founder of eBay (despite what John McCain says), tweets from time to time, and I'm following him. Recently, an eBay seller tweeted "at" him with, "Don't you feel ANY responsibility to fix
things/make them right - Largest shareholder & COB, yes? I thought
you would care more."
Lots of us have been tweeting at Pierre lately, hoping he's doing something. Some more strongly worded than others. This time, Pierre tweeted back:
Pierre cares, and I believe that. He is working with good people to make things better. I believe that. Pierre should have started earlier, hey I agree with that. But sometimes the kettle has to whistle like mad and all the water boil off until someone remembers to take it off the stove and turn off the burner. Takes time? I'm sure it does. There is a lot to fix, undo, and improve here.
I still believe in eBay. It's been a stinky year on this planet, but eBay can improve things. Some damage won't be undone. But with Pierre working on this, I have new hope. Starting recently is better than nothing being done.
eBay cares, and Pierre cares. There are people who care and are listening. I know it's hard now for eBay sellers, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it's NOT an oncoming train. :)
I still offer my help to Pierre, eBay, and anybody who wants my unique point of view on things.
Got up at 4am. Showered. Walked the dog. Didn't run into any wild animals.
Packed up my Camelback backpack with the 3-litre bladder. Ice water and a Camelback lemon-lime flavour chip thingy. Packed 3 peanut bars. Packed the new Seth Godin book, Tribes. Packed sunglasses in case I was still standing on line after the sun came up.
Drove 1.4 miles to Sun City Vistoso's Navajo Room. Sun City Vistoso is a giant retirement community roughly across the street from my development. Got there at 5:30am. Polls open at 6am.
I was the only one there, other than the volunteers. They told me they open at 6am, and checked that I was at the right location. Yes, polling place 341.
I hung out in my car until other people started arriving. Then I lined up. Mostly retirees. Some drove their golf carts to the function room set up as our polling place.
I had registered to vote in January 2008. I had the official Arizona voter's card with my full name, address, polling location 341, ID number, and even my party. My party is listed as PND. Not sure what that means. I registered Independent so I wouldn't get lots of calls, letters, and evidently around here, things stuck on my doorknob. I got zero! I win!
The first thing you do is check in to make sure your name is in the registered voter book.
I wasn't in it.
I was sent over to a table for "provisional" and "conditional" voters... people who aren't in the book, their IDs didn't match their voter card, and other wacky mishaps. I had to fill out a form explaining I wasn't in the book. I was helped by Lyle, who I would guess was around 84 years old.
I got to vote, which here at location 341 is a high school style colour-in-circles sheet. No chads, no punching, no electronic machines. Well, there was ONE electronic machine that said things to you if you can't read or see I guess. But we all had to colour in the circles for who we wanted and on propositions. But then mine had to go into a special envelope attached to my "provisional" form.
I get a receipt for this with a number, website, and phone number. It says that I should call the County Recorders office in ten days (TEN DAYS) to find out whether or not my vote were counted. What happens if they tell me my vote was NOT counted? Nobody at the polling place knew the answer to that.
Of course, if my guy wins, I won't bother looking into this. But I do get the bizarre feeling that my vote will hang around in that blue bin, waiting for someone to decide if it's "good" or not, and I won't know for 10 days if it were even COUNTED. And will anybody call up, and these people will say, "Yeah, we didn't count your vote!"??? I'd imagine they just say yes to everybody so nobody whips up trouble!
My official voter card and ID should have been enough. I have no idea why I wasn't in the book, but I do know the person filling out the form next to me was a registered Democrat. And here we are in Arizona, McCain's home state... yet it's a bit of a close race here. If enough Democratic votes are counted, AZ could go blue!
But will our votes be counted? When WILL they get to the ones sealed in the special blue bin, the bin for people who weren't in the book or had non-matching IDs? Were any Republicans not in the book?
I'm a little concerned. But I'll know in about 10 hrs if I should be really concerned! And I was out of there by 6:24am. Would have been sooner if I didn't have to fill out forms with Lyle! 6:30am, called CNN's hotline to let them know what was up, and how I won't know if my vote were counted until 10 days from now.
There was an eBay seller from whom my husband used to buy... until he
read his About Me page. This guy used his About Me page to share his
religious views, which my husband found uncomfortable. My husband
stopped buying from the guy even though his product was good, his price
was good, and the service was good. The guy used his platform to talk
about something that made my husband disconnect from him. Customer lost.
My personal experience with religion and business is actually the opposite. I was raised with a certain religion, but didn't continue with it. I have my own view of who God is and what God expects from me, and I haven't found it in any church, temple, mosque, or other house of worship. So I just do my own thing.
I have found that people of my religion have hired me because of my religion. People who don't like my religion and don't seem to notice what religion I was raised (or don't care) haven't cared.
Locally here in Tucson, they put out a directory you can pick up at various places for free. Golden Corral has it in the lobby! :) I don't remember what it's called, but it's a directory of "Christian" businesses. I'm not sure if the CEO has to be Christian, or if you are just promising to follow Christian business practices, whatever those are. But if you are looking to do business specifically with Christians, then you have this directory. Many people will not be able to get into that directory, but that's evidently the point. ;)
I wonder... if the people who get that directory and really only want to work with Christians, do they fire vendors they may have and like because they're not Christian or not Christian enough? That's your right, but it does seem to miss some "love thy brother" type of stuff since I don't remember the quote being "love thy brother only if he believes in exactly what you believe."
My clients run the spectrum. We work with Chasidic Jews, born again Christians, and Muslims. We work with people who don't really seem to care about religion. I love all our clients equally. I see them as clients, not "that Christian client."
My dream for this country is not for far from the intention with which it was founded. I just want rights and opporunities for everybody, and I don't want us to label or judge (or hurt) people because we stuck them in a group we decided wasn't enough like us. I don't like the idea that people are walking out of businesses because they aren't happy with the religion of the owner or workers. That's just inches from refusing to do business with people of certain races, genders, heights, political affiliations, or sexualities.
I got a blog comment today from a post I wrote last week that I've since deleted at the suggestion of the person who emailed me. It was a post about how both candidates will tax and spend... they will both take taxes from me, and they will both spend that money without asking me where I want it to go! Therefore, both McCain and Obama will redistribute my wealth. Bush sent my money to hurricane victims and Iraq. Taxes in nature are a redistribution of wealth. Doesn't that make them socialist in nature? Doesn't that mean any President in power has SOME socialist policies as long as my tax dollars don't go to my immediate area?
My post also asked people to explain these whole "socialist" and "marxist" comments since I don't fully get it. I look at Canada and Ireland, and I like the idea that every single citizen there gets some sort of health care automatically and for free. It may not be the best or the fastest health care in the country, but you get SOMETHING. You are not left with nothing. And people who have money or want to spend more on their health care have those choices in those countries. You can pay for things yourself if you decide you want better than the free version.
This wasn't in my original post, but let me ask this. Is "you are your brother's keeper" socialist?
I look at this country, and I feel like we need to spend so much more money making things better. We have so many hungry, homeless, unemployed, and uninsured or underinsured, and where does our money go? Teachers are being cut. Our local university just announced that they will start cutting faculty. Now we're sacrificing education too. We spent so much money on war while people here are starving and can't pay for their mortgages. It's like we have no concept of a future or future generations!
Both candidates promise to change the situation. But according to the person who commented in my now-deleted blog post, my blog post swung socialist and pro-Obama. This person then announced that if he was ever thinking of doing business with me, now he won't because he is voting for the Libertarian candidate. So I lost a potential customer because I want health care for poor people, don't understand why Obama is being attacked as a Marxist, and might prefer Obama over McCain. OK then!
What I wanted to know is this: will the person who emailed me poll all of his vendors to see how they're voting? Will he replace any of his vendors that are voting for McCain or Obama out of concern that they might like policies someone is calling socialist? Will he only hire companies who have CEOs that voted Libertarian? Does he only hire companies run by people of a certain colour? Gender? Religion? Sexuality? Where does this guy draw the line?
I may not be very good at social studies, but I remember America as a country founded by people looking for equality and to not be persecuted for their beliefs. I think of this country now as a place where people are STILL fighting for that. It's within the last 50-100 years that women couldn't vote, segregation was common, smoking was good for you :), and Japanese were rounded up and put in camps. Irish and Catholics were crapped on. Jews didn't fare too well over the last 100 years.
We are unfortunately NOT so far away from movements of intolerance, judgment, and putting people down for who they are. These things are alive now! Some people hate all Muslims because of what a few Muslims have done. We still haven't learned our lessons that all men are created equal and "judge not."
I would probably miss out on great friends, great business partners, great staff, and great vendors if I chose everybody by how much they were just like me. Surrounding myself with people who think just like I do is going to put me in a very small and limited world. I'm glad that I have friends with their own beliefs. I'm glad I have staff who are voting for different candidates this year. I'm glad the vendors that I choose are in a country where they get to be Democrat, Repulican, Libertarian, Green, or other, and they are comfy expressing that.
And if you don't want to work with my company because you don't like that I think all Americans should get SOME sort of free health care so that people aren't needlessly sick and dying, and that how health care is done in Canada and Ireland looks like it has some redeeming qualities, then I'm sorry we won't be doing business together.
