Oddities November 7, 2008
Posted by almarose in A.D.D., ADHD, Attention-Deficit Disorder, Auctiva, How to set up an eBay store, blessing, e-seller success, eBay, eBay store, selling online, setting up an eBay store.Tags: Auctiva advantages, Auctiva disadvantages, Auctiva store categories, brass candlesticks, brass tray, eBay feedback score, eBay store categories, eBay store vs. Auctiva store, gift certificates, media mail rules
add a comment
What’s a Girl to Do?
eBay every day. Even though I am an Attention-Deficit-Disordered Individual, I have managed to discipline myself to “eBay every day.”
(1) I accept “best offers” on items sold via my eBay store. These offers are good for only 24 hours. It took me a while to catch on to that, because in your eBay Message Box there are “Received” and “Expired” columns, and the “Expired” date is a month after the “Received” date. Apparently, that “Expired” date refers to the e-mail message, not to the offer. In any case, a few “best offers” I would have gladly accepted have slipped through my fingers because I wasn’t checking my eBay Messages regularly.
(2) When I sell an item, naturally I want to ship it right away, so that I can serve my customers well and receive positive feedback and get cute little certificates like this:
Antique charcoal iron -- poor choice for "something extra" (photo by Vincent de Groot)
Auctiva quirks. Auctiva is just swell. The big advantages are (1) a charmingly formatted listing — more charming than eBay’s slimmer selection of listing enhancements, plus eBay bills you for the graphic extras and Auctiva does not; (2) the ability to post a few dozen photos on a single listing at no charge; (3) the scrolling gallery that automatically rolls along, displaying your other items for sale, at the bottom of your listing.
With Auctiva you automatically get an Auctiva store, but it does not replace your eBay store. It says so, right there in the Auctiva FAQ, which I cannot, at this particular moment, locate. So there you are, anyway, with two stores. eBay automatically inserts a link to your eBay store in your listing. But if people click on items in your scrolling gallery, they (the item-clickers) are transported to your Auctiva store.
When you list an item through Auctiva, you are asked which categories in your eBay store the item belongs in. You would think — wouldn’t you? — that your Auctiva store would emulate your eBay store and stick your listings in the same categories?
Alas, no. You have to organize your Auctiva store separately — something I have not taken the time to do. And Auctiva store categories bear no relationship to any categories you might have set up for photos you have imported. I have, for example, a category called “Women’s Clothing, Accessories” in my eBay store, and I have a category called “Women’s Clothing, Accessories” for my Auctiva photos, but neither of these categories translates to a “Women’s Clothing, Accessories” category in my Auctiva store.
Buy-it-now price -- $6.99 plus S&H
Thus, someone who is whisked to my Auctiva store is looking at 75 items in no particular order — books next to baby booties next to brass candlesticks.
A.D.D. inattentiveness. I have a lot of stuff going on right now. I’m doing a semi-serious study of meditation. I’m working on a book, How to Write Poetry and Live Poetically, which is evolving via one of my three blogs. I’m trying to lure customers to my website, particularly my Holiday Store, and — this is big — I actually signed a contract to underwrite the National Public Radio program Speaking of Faith, which airs here in Omaha on Sunday mornings. The underwriting announcement features my new “Little Book,” Carry Me to This Enchanted Shore: A Morning Prayer and my larger book of prayers, meditations, household hints, and other odds and ends, Unfamiliar Territory. It is a lovely book, in full color throughout, and I suggest that you buy large quantities of all my books, because I could really use the money and everybody can always use a little inspiration. Meanwhile, I have neglected to add new merchandise to my eBay store, which is just plain dumb, because I have piles of stuff to sell — large, teetering piles that could cause me to sustain a Grave Personal Injury.
May Whoever Is On Duty bless you and your endeavors, and protect you from Grave Personal Injury…. —Mary
* * *
Publish your Little Book in an easy little way….
Publish Risk-Free… November 1, 2008
Posted by almarose in eBay, eBay store, online marketing, selling online.Tags: Carry Me to This Enchanted Shore, children's poems wanted, free eBay store listing, meditation writing, morning prayer, no listing fees, PayPal transactions, publish your poetry as a book, publish your poetry online, spiritual wisdom, submit poems, submit prose, writers wanted, Zero Gravity's "Little Books" series
1 comment so far
…in Zero Gravity’s “Little Books” series
Wanted: Zero Gravity “Little Books” to produce for sale on the Zero Gravity website at www.LifeIsPoetry.net. Please see sample on the Zero Gravity website at Carry Me to This Enchanted Shore: A Morning Prayer.
We are seeking
-
original prayers
-
spiritual wisdom, and
-
meditation-related poetry or prose
…from all faith traditions. If accepted, your submission will be designed as part of the Zero Gravity “Little Books” series and offered for sale in Zero Gravity’s Holiday Store and Bookstore and listed in our eBay store.
You book will remain in Zero Gravity’s Bookstore and eBay store listings until you request that it be withdrawn.
Books are 5-1/2 by 8-1/2 inches, printed in full color on recycled card stock with laminated covers and comb binding.
Deadline
You may submit manuscripts at any time. The deadline for inclusion in Zero Gravity’s online Holiday Store and eBay Holiday Store, however, is November 15, 2008.
Terms
You will retain copyright on text; the publisher, Zero Gravity, will hold copyright on design. Copyright on images will remain with either the artist/photographer or Zero Gravity.
You pay only setup/design cost: $1.50 per page (10 pages minimum, 25 pages maximum - $15.00 to $37.50). A $15.00 deposit is required at the time the manuscript is accepted. Please allow about 7 business days for completed design.
You may purchase as many finished books as you want at 40 cents per page plus USPS media-mail shipping rate. There is no “handling charge.” (You have the option of selecting Priority Mail or Express Mail for faster delivery. E-mail Mary@LifeIsPoetry.net if you wish to use a USPS service other than media mail.)
Selected books will be offered on the Zero Gravity website and eBay store with no listing fee. Books sold via the Zero Gravity website and eBay store will be priced as follows:
(a) 40 cents per page, plus
(b) $2.00 Zero Gravity commission, plus
(c) whatever additional markup you choose, if any, plus
(d) USPS media-mail shipping rate (unless you specify Priority Mail or Express Mail)
Sample transaction 1
-
You submit text, which Zero Gravity designs as a 10-page book - you pay $15.00.
-
You may purchase as many books as you wish at $4.00 each plus shipping — to keep, to sell, or to give away.
Sample transaction 2
-
You submit text, which Zero Gravity designs as a 15-page book - you pay $22.50.
-
You may purchase as many books as you wish at $6.00 each plus shipping.
-
Zero Gravity offers your book for sale at (a) $6.00 + (b) $2.00 Zero Gravity commission + (c) whatever markup you specify ($2.00, for example) + (d) $2.23 media-mail shipping. Total cost to buyer: $12.23. You immediately earn $2.00 per book sold, less nominal PayPal fee.
Please note…
-
For samples of our design work, please browse books offered via Zero Gravity on our website. The “Little Book” Carry Me to This Enchanted Shore: A Morning Prayer represents Zero Gravity’s “Little Book” design style. If your book contains a great deal of text, the images will likely be smaller, but a full-color image will appear on each page.
-
Sample USPS media-mail rates: up to 1 pound $2.23; up to 2 pounds $2.58; up to 3 pounds $2.93…. See USPS website for all postal rates. Media-mail rates are computed by weight. If your books weigh a half-pound or less, the cost of shipping two books will be the same as the cost of shipping one book. Rarely, the USPS first-class rate will be lower than the media-mail rate; Zero Gravity will ship at the lowest available rate unless you specify otherwise.
-
If you are ordering books as gifts, Zero Gravity will send your purchase directly to the recipient with free gift wrap if you so request via e-mail to Mary@LifeIsPoetry.net.
-
All financial transactions will take place via credit card or E-check through PayPal, so you will need to open a free PayPal account if you do not already have one.
-
Zero Gravity will accept only manuscripts that are well written and that conform to the criteria established above: original prayers, spiritual wisdom, and meditation-related poetry or prose from all faith traditions. Zero Gravity will make minor editing changes subject to your approval. If your manuscript has merit but needs extensive editing, Zero Gravity will quote a separate fee for editing, with no obligation on your part. As noted above, you will pay a $15 deposit only when your completed manuscript is accepted for publication.
-
Please submit all manuscripts in English as Microsoft Word attachments to e-mail addressed to Mary@LifeIsPoetry.net. Please put “manuscript” in the subject line of your e-mail.
-
There are no reader’s fees or entry fees. By submitting your manuscript, however, you are agreeing to pay a $15 deposit if your manuscript is accepted and to pay the balance upon completion.
-
You may, if you wish, indicate a maximum number of pages for your finished book.
-
If you have questions, please e-mail Mary@LifeIsPoetry.net with “manuscript questions” in the subject line.
-
We welcome children’s work. Please indicate age if under 18.
We look forward to seeing your work and designing a beautiful setting for it!
————
Zero Gravity HOLIDAY STORE and eBay HOLIDAY STORE now open
BORE-ing October 29, 2008
Posted by almarose in How to set up an eBay store, blessing, e-seller success, eBay, eBay store, humor, selling online, setting up an eBay store.Tags: Aaron Copland, Alexander Kerensky, Appalachian Spring, Beef It's What's for Dinner, Bolshevik Revolution, Bolsheviks, Dorothy Kilgallen, eBay insurance, eBay shipping, Fanfare for the Common Man, February Revolution, Jackie Gleason, Minnesota Fats, Nelson Rockefeller, October Revolution, Paul Newman, PayPal buyer protection, PayPal insurance, Rodeo, Russian Revolution, Stamps.com, Stanford University, U.S. postal service, Warren Buffett, What's My Line
1 comment so far
I am going to tell you (a) something boring and (b) something interesting, so have patience, my friend.
A. Why offer insurance?
Alexander Kerensky
In establishing my eBay store, my research into eBay and PayPal policies and procedures has been perfunctory at best, but I have found out a few useful things lately.
1 - If you sell an item and use the eBay/PayPal “print shipping label” function for U.S. mail, you have to pay 18 cents for mandatory delivery confirmation — unless you send the item via Priority Mail or Express Mail. There is no such requirement if you prepare your shipping label on Stamps.com, although Stamps.com charges you more than $13 per month just for the privilege of having it available. I like Stamps.com because you can buy nice little preformatted stick-on shipping labels and you don’t have to glue the label to the box or the envelope, which, when I do it, always makes a huge mess and smears the ink.
You could go to USPS.com and use its label-printing service, but it’s available only for the more chichi methods of shipping, such as Priority Mail and Express Mail, plus you still have the glue problem. As a last resort, you could actually take the item to the post office, but that’s out of the question as far as I’m concerned. For one thing, I don’t have a car. Having a taxi haul me to the post office so I can save a few cents on shipping doesn’t strike me as a clever economic strategy.
Warren Buffett; photo by Mark Hirschey
2 - PayPal Buyer Protection
PayPal Buyer Protection helps you if you don’t receive your item or the item is significantly different from its description in the seller’s listing. Eligible transactions are covered up to the full purchase price and original shipping charges. Certain categories are excluded [things I never sell anyway, like cars and surface-to-air missiles*]…. An item is covered by PayPal Buyer Protection if [you buy the item on eBay and pay for it through PayPal and file your claim within 45 days blah blah blahty blah].
The full PayPal User Agreement is much more complicated and keeps referring you to Part B-7, Section 243.6, and the like, but the POINT is this: SINCE ALL MY SALES GO THROUGH PAYPAL, THERE IS NO REASON FOR ME TO OFFER INSURANCE ON ITEMS I SELL.
If I’m incorrect, please let me know. I still have a LOT to learn about selling on eBay.
B. Famous people I have met
Dorothy Kilgallen
I’m going to reward you for plodding through the above boring segment by telling you about Famous People I Have Met. Most of these are no longer household names. I am 61 years old (as of last Thursday — your gift must have gotten lost in the mail) and you are probably 32 or something, but still….
Dorothy Kilgallen was a very famous journalist, but I was only 7 when I met her, and I was aware of her only as a regular panelist on the erudite game show What’s My Line? which my parents never missed. I was in a fashion show she hosted at the Omaha Civic Auditorium. I got to keep the dress I modeled plus $10, which I wanted to spend on Baby Ruth bars, but my mother talked me into buying a keepsake-type item, a tiny hutch that today hangs on the wall in my kitchen. My mother was wise.
Alexander Kerensky was a leader of the February 1917 Russian Revolution and became prime minister of the provisional government, which was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in October 1917. He was born in 1881, so he was 84 years old when I met him in 1965. I was chairman of the cultural committee in my dorm at Stanford University, and he lived across the street. We engaged him as a speaker, and I held an umbrella over his head (because it was raining) as I escorted him to the dorm. He had lived in the U.S. for a long time, but his accent was so thick that I don’t remember a thing he said. But still….
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, some of whose works are familiar to you even if his name is not; in particular, Fanfare for the Common Man and the ballets Rodeo and Appalachian Spring. The “Hoe-Down” theme from Rodeo was background music for those “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner” commercials for a long time. In my dorm at Stanford we had family-style dinners; you know, you sit anywhere you like and the servers plop big dishes of enchiladas or mashed potatoes or whatever in the middle of the table and you pass them around. Other girls’ parents or grandparents often visited, so you thought nothing of it if a grandfatherly sort of man were sitting next to you. So I was passing the peas-and-pearl-onions to the grandfatherly sort of man sitting next to me, and I politely introduced myself and found myself shaking hands with Aaron Copland and I almost spilled the peas-and-pearl-onions in his lap.
Minnesota Fats is someone you have probably heard of. The 1961 Jackie Gleason–Paul Newman (whose recent death I mourn as I would that of a lifelong friend) film The Hustler might or might not have been based on his pool exploits. I was working as a waitress in Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1981, when Minnesota Fats was in town to promote the opening of a new pool hall. The restaurant normally did not serve breakfast, but it opened specially for him and his companions, the pool-hall owner and another man. I gave them their breakfast, and then they invited me to sit and eat with them, which I did. They called him “Fatty” with a straight face.
Nelson Rockefeller
There are others (too numerous to mention) whom I met either at Stanford or in Washington, D.C., when I worked there in 1976 and 1977. I did not exactly meet Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, but I was waiting for an elevator when his security goons got off the left elevator and sort of pushed me aside, and seconds later Vice President Rockefeller got off the right elevator and said “Hi ya’” to me, and I said, “Hello, Mr. Vice President.”
One famous person whom I have not met, although my ex-husband used to work for him and he lives about a mile away, is Warren Buffett. If I ever do meet him, I will ask him for $500 million to rehabilitate selected Omaha neighborhoods that once were grand. That is my dream.
May Whoever Is On Duty bless you and your dreams…. —Mary
__________
* I am joking, of course. Do not sue me. You cannot buy surface-to-air missiles on eBay.
♦
Find unique Christmas and Solstice cards and gifts at Zero Gravity’s new Holiday Store!
Book Report October 18, 2008
Posted by almarose in How to set up an eBay store, blessing, e-seller success, eBay, eBay store, selling online, setting up an eBay store.Tags: eBay fees, selling books on eBay, Nora Roberts, Philippa Gregory, Diana Gabaldon, J.D. Robb, Christmas cards, Winter Solstice cards, Christmas gifts, Holiday cards, holiday gifts, children's books, eBay vs. Amazon, USPS media mail, eBay seller fees, Amazon seller fees, Amazon fees, romance novels, best romance novels, MacGregors
1 comment so far
Voluminous
I just listed a dozen or so Nora Roberts novels on my eBay store. This week I’ll list another eight or ten. One advantage of selling books, rather than, say, Land’s End chinos or heirloom china, can be summed up in two words: Media Mail. It’s the cheapest way by far to ship eBay items… and books are unbreakable and easy to pack.
Why eBay rather than Amazon?
And what’s with Nora Roberts?
Why eBay? Why not Amazon?
It costs more to sell used books on Amazon than on eBay. “If you expect to have less [sic] than 40 orders a month,” you can “sign up as an individual seller… [with] no monthly fee but instead a per-product-sold fee of 99 cents.” In addition, there’s a “referral fee” of 15 percent.
Alternatively, you can pay a monthly subscription fee of $39.99 per month plus, as I read it, a 15-percent referral fee and a “variable” closing fee ($1.35 each for books). If there’s anything left over and you actually earn some money with your sales, Amazon doles it out to you every two weeks.
Most of the books I sell are paperbacks at $1 each. I add exactly one dollar, which covers packaging materials, to the Postal Service Media Mail rate. I’d lose my shirt on Amazon.
On eBay I pay $15.99 per month for my “basic” store. Listing fees for store items (priced under $25) are only 3 cents each, and the final-value fee is 12 percent.
The contrast in fees is reason enough to choose eBay, but there’s another strong incentive: On eBay the buyer pays me directly through PayPal and, since I have a PayPal debit card, the money is immediately available to me. eBay bills me once a month.
I might get more traffic on Amazon, but there’s also more competition. I still don’t understand - and if you do, please explain it to me - how the sellers who price their books on Amazon at 1 cent make any money at all.
What’s with Nora Roberts?
[Note: I wrote this panegyric to Nora Roberts several months ago as part of another blog, the Writing Queen, in which I express unabashed admiration for the works of Diana Gabaldon, Philippa Gregory, and Roberts. Since then, I have read all the police-procedurals Roberts has written under the pseudonym "J.D. Robb." They're superb, and they won't be offered for sale in my eBay store any time soon.]
Dare I link Nora Roberts’s name with Gabaldon’s and Gregory’s? Nora Roberts, who has had 124 novels on the New York Times bestseller list? Whose books in print exceed 280 million copies? Who produces a new book more often than I dust?
After my most recent Roberts-fest, the “MacGregors” series, I asked myself, once again, “How does she do it?” How, that is, does she write the same story, over and over and over again, putting her characters into different bodies and different scenic locales (usually by the turbulent sea, Atlantic or Pacific), giving them different names and occupations, but telling essentially the same tale?
She does it beautifully, though I confess I cringe every time she uses disinterested when she means uninterested. Still, I am seldom distracted by careless grammar or poor editing. Her research must be fascinating, and exacting. The men and women who populate her books are very believable cops, boat-builders, cartoonists, witches, racecar-drivers, innkeepers, sculptors, carpenters, fashion models, certified public accountants, four-star chefs, and horse breeders. None of them, it must be said, is fat or ugly, and if a character in one of her books is short of cash, it’s only temporary.
Boy meets girl, boy is rudely antisocial, girl is fiercely independent, the barriers come down, the clothes come off, someone puts a fly in the ointment, it gets fished out, and boy and girl get married, have at least three children, and live happily ever after. If we’re lucky, as in the case of the MacGregors, we get to read about several generations of lusty young men and women repeating the errors of their elders, and always triumphing
The principals are almost always white (often Irish or Scottish, though there are French and Comanche strains running through the extended MacGregor clan) and robustly heterosexual, but their close friends might or might not be black, or gay, or both. One of her heroes cheerfully donates sperm (in a clinical setting, not body to body) for his sister’s partner so that, I guess it goes without saying, the couple can have a baby. Roberts writes very comfortably, never coyly, about interracial and gay couples, neither making an issue of “diversity” nor backing away from it.
Her gift, I think, is the ability to pick you up and plop you down in some irresistible setting - an island along the New England or Georgia coastline, a clifftop near Carmel, occasionally a sunset town in Montana - and then surround you with charming people - utterly innocent, thoroughly jaded, and everything in between… and you get to live there for a while, in the beautiful, kaleidoscopic whirlwind she’s painted, and watch people grope their way toward each other… and it’s just lots of fun. Every damn time.
And I learn from them all - these made-up people with genuine humanity - the creations of Gregory, Gabaldon, and Roberts. They inspire me, even if it’s only to have a tidy, well-organized workspace like Cybil Campbell in Roberts’s The Perfect Neighbor. They never let me forget - as engrossing and colorful as their lives and times are, there, on the pages, their affairs so tidy one minute, so messy the next - to live my own life first and peek in on theirs only after my chores are done. Well, except for that “sick day” I spent reading [Philippa Gregory's] The Queen’s Fool….
♦
Visit the new Holiday Store at LifeIsPoetry.net for Christmas and Winter Solstice cards, gifts, books, personalized children’s books, original (signed and numbered) art, and lots more.
May Whoever Is On Duty bless you and your endeavors.
Busted October 9, 2008
Posted by almarose in A.D.D., ADHD, Attention-Deficit Disorder, How to set up an eBay store, blessing, e-seller success, eBay, eBay store, humor, selling online, setting up an eBay store.Tags: chrysanthemums, eBay shipping, losing money on eBay, postal service, priority mail, unique Christmas cards, USPS
add a comment
Support Your Local Postal Carrier: Buy from My eBay Store
Rather than checking potential eBay items for flaws; laundering and ironing or sterilizing them; photographing them, measuring them, weighing them, preparing them for shipping, and then listing them; it would probably be more efficient, from a financial standpoint, if I just drove past the post office and threw money at it.
This has been a particularly unfortunate week, profitwise, for my eBay store, even though I sold five items.
It began when a woman named Shelley purchased a particularly nice little throw, in pastel plaids, which I couldn’t price very high because it had a few loose threads. Still, it was too nice to give to the thrift store on the other side of the church where I live.
Shelley very kindly paid immediately, and the $$ went instantly into my PayPal account, and I printed the shipping label, only to discover that the parcel weighed more than I thought it did, so I applied for a postage refund, but these things take time. (It requires much more time to give you back your $$ than it does to snatch it up. They must use third-party fiscal intermediaries, as Medicare does - those nonmedical personnel who sit and scratch their heads and decide whether Mr. Arthur Proboscis really needs that triple bypass.)
SOLD for minus $8
Before I could print a new label, eBay swooped down on its broomstick and grabbed what was left in my PayPal account plus about $30 - “final-value fees” - and suddenly I was, like, $25 overdrawn. The next day, three more buyers purchased inexpensive little doodads - clothing, actually - so my PayPal balance crept back up toward zero.
It soared to a buck-fifty when someone bought a thank-you card from my website, and I had enough $$ in Stamps.com postage, fortunately, to ship the card right away, along with two sample Christmas cards, which brought the price of shipping to roughly even with the revenue from the card. But I still couldn’t ship the four eBay items (via parcel post, as specified in the listing).
So I did what any attention-deficit-disordered individual would do when confronted with such a dilemma. I read a book and waited for the money fairy to fly past, sprinkling gold dust on my bed.
Happy birthday, Uncle Sam
I use Lulu.com’s print-on-demand service for my books. Lulu.com recently informed me that it was raising its prices and that if I wanted to continue to not earn any $$ by not selling any books, but at a higher selling price, I was welcome to raise my own prices accordingly.
Inspiration struck, kind of like the rock some kid threw at my head last year when I was out working in my yardlet. (He had good aim, too; or else he was trying to hit the fence and had bad aim. In any case, I saw stars.)
My Yardlet (July 2008)
I could have a one-day pre-price-raising sale on my most popular book(!), which is to say, the one I give away the most: Unfamiliar Territory. I sent out an e-mail, mostly to people to whom I have given copies of the book, thinking that they might like to buy a couple for Christmas presents or something. I offered the books at my cost, with free shipping, and three very discerning and thrifty persons responded affirmatively, which meant that I now had money to ship my eBay items.
But of course I had to send them via Priority Mail, as the eBay buyers had waited long enough, and of course I had to throw in an extra item or two. So this morning I repacked the four items and the extras in Flat-Rate Priority Mail boxes, at $12.95 (or something) per parcel, and I delivered the boxes to the post office, and as I was walking back toward my borrowed car, the postal clerk came to the door and shouted to me that the flat-rate boxes I had used required only $8.95 (or something) in postage, not $12.95. “Oh, well — happy birthday, Uncle Sam,” I shouted back, and it didn’t occur to me until I got home that maybe they would have compensated me with $16 worth of stamps.
Bottom line: I sold four items on eBay for a net revenue of, oh, minus $26 and change, and I gave away some pretty decent merchandise to boot, and in a few weeks I’ll have to pay “final value fees” on those items. To make my day even bleaker, I discovered that one of my other buyers had given me a “neutral” rating. I have no idea why, because I shipped his item the day after he paid for it, and he was all complimentary about it in the narrative part of the rating, plus I sent him a T-shirt to go with his grunge Levi’s, which he bought for 99 cents. Were they damaged in shipping? How can you damage ripped Levi’s?
Now I have to figure out how to pay Lulu.com for the three books I sold, and I’m very much afraid that the money fairy is currently working somewhere in the Western Ghats and won’t be back this way for a while.
But it’s a beautiful autumn day, and the sun is slanting in benignly from the western sky, making clever flickering fan shapes on my wall, and I intend to sit outside a bit and enjoy my chrysanthemums.
May Whoever Is On Duty bless you and your endeavors. -Mary
Books R I October 5, 2008
Posted by almarose in A.D.D., ADHD, Attention-Deficit Disorder, Auctiva, How to set up an eBay store, blessing, e-seller success, eBay, eBay store, humor, selling online, setting up an eBay store.Tags: Baroque music, choral music, George Frideric Handel, Heaven & Earth, Johann Sebastian Bach, Juan Gutierrez de Padilla, Kitaro, meditation music, music to work or study by, New Age music, Oliver Stone, Renaissance music, selling books on eBay, Thomas Tallis, Tommy Lee Jones, Vietnam War trilogy
add a comment
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently isn’t paying eBay and PayPal Seller fees. —Danno, on Auctiva
Bliss = Kitarō, Padilla
http://www.echoes.org/graphics/Kitaro.jpg
I have, à propos of nothing, found two new musical passions — both suitable accompaniments to meditation in entirely different ways:
Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (c. 1590 - 1664) was a composer of New Spain (a viceroyalty of Spain that included modern-day Mexico, the Philippines, Guatemala, and other parts of Central America and the Caribbean). He was born in Málaga, Spain, but moved to Puebla, Mexico, in 1620 to compose music in the new world. —Wikipedia
If you enjoy Renaissance and Baroque choral music, you’ll love Padilla. His Missa Ego Flos Campi, which you can hear in toto (not the dog, silly) HERE, is a sublime segue from the older almost chantlike style of, say, Thomas Tallis, to the later, fuller, more structured choral sounds of Bach and Handel.
Kitarō (born Masanori Takahashi) is a Grammy-award-winning Japanese musician, composer, and multi-instrumentalist…. Inspired by the R&B music of Otis Redding, Kitaro taught himself how to play guitar. “I never had education in music, I just learned to trust my ears and my feelings.” He gives credit for his creations to a power beyond himself. “This music is not from my mind,” he said. “It is from heaven, going through my body and out my fingers through composing. Sometimes I wonder. I never practice. I don’t read or write music, but my fingers move. I wonder, ‘Who’s song is this?’ I write my songs, but they are not my songs.” —Wikipedia
Heaven & Earth
Listen to Kitaro HERE. Listen to Kitaro while you’re doing the laundry or balancing your checkbook. Because I am an attention-deficit-disordered individual, music generally either distracts or annoys me when I am doing mental work. Kitaro’s music is energizing. Though I usually run like the wind from New Age music, Kitaro’s compositions are more like lush movie-sound-track music. (He won a Grammy for the sound track for the Oliver Stone film Heaven & Earth, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Haing S. Ngor, Joan Chen and Hiep Thi Le. It is the third film in Stone’s Vietnam War trilogy, which also included Platoon [1986] and Born on the Fourth of July [1989]. Heaven & Earth is a grim flick — difficult to watch but exquisite to listen to.)
Due to enchantment with Padilla and Kitaro, and necessity of shipping three (3!) eBay parcels, purchased on my eBay store, immédiatement, today’s topic — why to sell books on eBay, and how to list them using Auctiva — has been postponed.
May you and yours experience enchantment today and every day…. —Mary
Oops! September 30, 2008
Posted by almarose in A.D.D., ADHD, Attention-Deficit Disorder, How to set up an eBay store, blessing, e-seller success, eBay, eBay store, humor, selling online, setting up an eBay store.Tags: grunge, ripped Levi's, free shipping, shipping charge, eBay fees, final value fee, telecommunication, car theft, denial, sour cream frosting, carrot cake, buyer psychology, seller psychology, DNS error, Viagra solicitations, brain lobes, how to find your car keys, true friendship, profiting on eBay
1 comment so far
That Sinking Feeling
Forgot to pay the phone bill. Left it lying around where I’d notice it, but I didn’t have the money to pay it, so pretended it wasn’t there, and if it sort of rattled as I walked past it, I pretended that I had another week or so before the big D.
Kept pretending, until the morning I was reading e-mail and then I wasn’t. Had that mind-benumbed lame-hope moment, like when you’re miles from civilization in a blizzard, and your brain’s Crazy lobe overpowers the Rational lobe, insisting that you have just enough gas to make it to the next town, and when your engine sputters and dies you can just hardly BELIEVE it. Or like when my car was stolen right out of the smallish parking lot of the building where I worked, and at the end of the day when I went out to drive myself home, and couldn’t find my car, I walked around and around the parking lot, zombielike, positive that I simply wasn’t looking in the right place, until everyone else had left and the lot was emptier than the bowl I once made sour-cream frosting in, for carrot cake, but I was thinking about something else and - oops again - ate all the frosting. With my fingers.
The attention-deficit-disordered individual excels at denial. I also excelled at making my car available for theft, because, since I could never find my keys once I took them out of the ignition, I always left them IN the ignition, in plain sight, usually with the windows open. It was a shitty-looking car, and I didn’t think anyone would be able to contemplate it long enough to think about stealing it.
So, on the morning that my monitor displayed “DNS error” — when I was expecting to see at least a few solicitations from Viagra vendors and maybe a promise that I wouldn’t have to sleep alone that night, and that my bed partner would have a key appendage of equine proportions — I prayed to the telecom gods, picked up the phone, punched it “on,” put the receiver to my ear, and heard that scritching sound that is NEVER a prelude to a dial tone. Reeling from shock, I slunk over to the church (Have I mentioned that my apartment is in a church?) (Did you know that it’s possible to reel and slink at the same time?) and borrowed Sara’s computer to e-mail my sainted friend Jane, who has loved me since childhood, defying all logic and good sense; and Jane put enough money in my PayPal account to pass along to Qwest, which I did, online, that very evening, which was a Very Good Thing because there was an automatic payment due the next day, which PayPal, for some reason, let slide through, and now I am $26.37 overdrawn on PayPal.
I blame Free Shipping
No more Free Shipping from my eBay store. eBay lured me into it, with vague promises of discounts and promotional benefits, but I’m going back to calculated or flat-rate shipping, for three reasons:
-
Psychology. As a buyer, I don’t balk at shipping fees. I figure they’re worth it, in that I don’t have to go out to purchase the actual item in an actual store, driving an actual automobile, which I don’t actually own one of.
-
Profit. For most of the items I list, the shipping cost is as high as, or higher than, the selling price. eBay’s “final-value fee” is about ten percent. If I include shipping in the selling price, then eBay takes its percentage on the whole package, so to speak. But if I sell an item for 99 cents plus $6.82 shipping, as happened just yesterday, then eBay gets around ten percent of 99 cents rather than 10 percent of $7.81.
-
I can’t remember the third reason. I’ll get back to you on that. Meanwhile…
May Whoever Is On Duty bless you and your endeavors. -Mary
SOLD for 99 cents plus $6.82 shipping
“Mom!” September 21, 2008
Posted by almarose in A.D.D., ADHD, Attention-Deficit Disorder, blessing, e-seller success, eBay, eBay store, humor, selling online.Tags: A.D.D. parent, Land of Oz, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House books, Mary Poppins, milk let-down reflex, mothering, parenthood, parenting A.D.D. kids, the word Mom, Wizard of Oz
2 comments
My Favorite Word
Making a Garden with Mom
Try this experiment:
- Take your small child to the grocery store at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. (This experiment works only if you are a woman and if you have a small child. If you don’t have your own, you could borrow one, with his or her parents’ permission, but you would have to coach the child and, even with coaching, the needed spontaneity would be lacking.)
- Dawdle in the Produce Section or the Baked Goods Aisle until your small child really has to pee. Alternatively, you could seem to disappear, though of course you would never let your small child out of your sight.
- Eventually, your child will cry, with bloodcurdling urgency…
- “Mom!”
- Just before you scoop your child up to offer comfort or scuttle to the bathroom, take a quick look around. Dozens — if it is a large store, possibly hundreds — of women’s heads will jerk, robotlike, in your direction. The owners of the pivoting heads will be mothers, and they will be experiencing the scientifically documented Head-Jerk Reaction, which was indelibly imprinted on their brain circuitry from the day their toddlers began to speak.
For years after I nursed my youngest baby, often when I heard a small child, any small child, yell “Mom!” I would experience milk let-down reflex. I am not exaggerating.
The A.D.D. mom with A.D.D. kids
My first child was a sweet, cuddly, non-A.D.D.-afflicted girl with a lively imagination and a love of books and dolls. She liked the stories that I had adored as a child — the Mary Poppins and Land of Oz books, the true tales of the Ingalls family, and many more — so, even as a single parent, I found mothering to be almost unmitigated joy. The peal of “Mom” was (and, oddly enough, remains) the sweetest sound of all sounds.
By the time Marian was ten, I had remarried and “started a new family.” I gave birth to two boys within eighteen months. The older son, Jack, would eventually be diagnosed as having “the most profound case of ADHD” his counselor had ever seen. His younger brother, Eli, was more benignly attention-deficit-disordered.
If you are an A.D.D. parent with A.D.D. children, you sink or swim. Having been wisely parented, I knew enough not to let the quieter children slip through the cracks while the hyperactive ones were “acting out.” So I became a Highly Structured A.D.D. Mom.
The first thing I did every morning, at 5 a.m. when I arose, was pray for strength. Then I meditated for serenity. Then I planned the day. One plan was never enough. I always had, in addition to Plan A, plans B through at least F.
For more than thirty years, I was an Active Parent, in the sense of having children living in the household — eating, throwing dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, bringing home stray dogs, needing rides to soccer practice and music lessons, and (more often than I care to remember) occasioning 3 a.m. phone calls from Officer Hardass asking me if I was the mother of whichever son was “acting out” at the time. I learned to be cautious in my reply. “Maybe,” I would say. “Why do you ask?”
That’s three decades of Structuring and going to court. Is it any wonder that now, in my solitude, I often decide to do Nothing in Particular, simply because I can?
eBay can wait
SOLD for $6.99 (shipping included)!
Accordingly, I am less aggressive than I could be in pursuit of my eBay store’s success. I’m very good about responding to questions, notifying buyers that they’ve won my item and that they owe me $6.83, and shipping the stuff I’ve sold. I’m a bit slower to actually list the items on eBay in the first place. I think I’m intimidated by my own checklist.
I go to great lengths to build structure into my life, but I think it might be most beneficial, all around, to simply adopt a small child.
May Whoever Is On Duty bless you and your endeavors. —Mary
Profiting! September 16, 2008
Posted by almarose in A.D.D., ADHD, Attention-Deficit Disorder, How to set up an eBay store, blessing, e-seller success, eBay, eBay store, humor, selling online, setting up an eBay store.Tags: Alexander Pope, Bach Cantata 106, count your blessings, Eddie Fisher, Essay on Man, God's Time Is the Best Time, gratefulness, gratitude, hope springs eternal, Johann Sebastian Bach, living in the moment, thankfulness, whatever is is right
add a comment
God’s Time Is the Best Time
Ann Taylor Loft Hoodie -- SOLD for Minus Six Cents
I’ve had a busy eBay week. I’m experimenting with Free Shipping, and my starting price is the cost of shipping plus one dollar. So far it’s worked pretty well, except in one case — I calculated wrong, and the item sold for $6 but shipping was $6.06. In any case, my receipts are starting to exceed my costs, so my eBay store is moving in the right direction.
I have been blessed by never being goal-oriented. I think it’s one of the benefits of A.D.D. You (if you have A.D.D.) just live in the moment because you’re constantly distracted by what’s going on around you.
But I think lots of people, including me sometimes, live from goal to goal. “I will be happy WHEN….” “I will feel peaceful WHEN….” And there IS no “when….” There’s just NOW. Which is not to say people shouldn’t have goals, or want things. Otherwise, why get out of bed?
This is from Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Man”….
Then say not Man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault, -
Say rather Man’s as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measur’d to his state and place,
His time a moment, and a point his space.
…
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rest and expatiates in a life to come.
…
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
W.M.J. Turner, "Pope's Villa at Twickenham"
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv’n,
Behind the cloud-topp’d hill, a humbler heav’n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d,
Some happier island in the wat’ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold!
To be, contents his natural desire;
He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire:
But things, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
…
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force:
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:
Is Heav’n unkind to Man, and Man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
Be pleas’d with nothing, if not bless’d with all?
…
Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow’r,
Or in the natal, or the moral hour.
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see
All discord, harmony not understood,
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.
- J.S. Bach with Three of His Sons
The Love of My Life
You know, when the electricity goes off, that surge of gratitude you feel when the lights go on? Then you forget it, and it’s business as usual. We don’t, except at those moments, think of electricity as gravy… as a blessing. We might think, man, we’d be in deep doodoo if the power went off, and then maybe we get an emergency generator. But we don’t stop to think, gee, I’m really grateful for electricity, or that my city isn’t being bombed to cinders today.
Wow! Big Electricity!
As corny as it sounds, Eddie Fisher was right… count your blessings.
Have peace today. All is well. –Mary
Runaway Italics September 7, 2008
Posted by almarose in A.D.D., ADHD, Attention-Deficit Disorder, How to set up an eBay store, blessing, e-seller success, eBay, eBay store, humor, selling online, setting up an eBay store.Tags: Auctiva, Stonehenge, University of Arizona, mainframe, DEC-10, Univac, SNOBOL, WYSIWYG, spellchecker, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, hotcakes, hot cakes
add a comment
Another Day, Another Lurch
Stonehenge: A Tourist Attraction
I was born a long time before personal computers. Come to that, I was born a long time before pretty much anything that’s not a tourist attraction.
So I remember, back in the 1970s, that early frustration with computers: If they’re so smart, how come they can’t read my mind? Okay, I entered “@#$%” but I meant to enter “@#$^.” Shouldn’t the computer have known that?
A lifetime ago I was the editor of the University of Arizona catalog. We worked on CRTs that were connected with a mainframe (a DEC-10), which was later converted into student housing. Our “text editor” was programmed in SNOBOL and was called “SOS” (”Son of Sam” or “Son of SNOBOL”); it was, in some ways, similar to HTML. If you wanted italics, you entered <it>, and when you were done with italics you entered <eit>. If you forgot to enter <eit>, the italics just went on and on and on, but you didn’t know that – this was pre-WYSIWYG – until you hiked over to pick up your fifty-pound green-and-white-striped printout and carried it back to your office and proofread it. This was eons before spellcheckers, but even a spellcheck wouldn’t have picked up the typo in the Special Education course “Reading and Study Skills for the Dead.”
Univac Mainframe Computer 1951
Then you fool around with them (computers) (not the dead, unless you’re into that, and, hey, who am I to judge?) for a while, and you learn their little quirks, kind of like a spouse, and the accommodation becomes automatic.
That’s kind of how it is with Auctiva. For example, it has this habit of freezing up (kind of like a spouse). You open Auctiva, you list an item, all goes well, you’re on a roll, you try to list another item, and SPLAT! That’s the sound of instant freezing-up.
So you learn that it’s best to close not just Auctiva but Internet Explorer, then reopen, and all goes well. I might have better luck with Firefox, but I have “issues” with Firefox.
They’re selling like hotcakes
SOLD for $1
What the hell does that mean, anyway?
Hot cakes cooked in bear grease [yum] or pork lard were popular from earliest times in America. First made of cornmeal, the griddle cakes or pancakes were of course best when served piping hot and were often sold at church benefits, fairs, and other functions. So popular were they that by the beginning of the 19th century ‘”to sell like hot cakes” was a familiar expression for anything that sold very quickly effortlessly, and in quantity. —From Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997)
I’m averaging an item a day, saleswise, though I’m pretty sure the revenue from my eBay store hasn’t overtaken the eBay fees, but we’re making progress, and we’re getting ready to launch our Christmas/Solstice/Pick-Your-Holiday Department. (By “we” I mean “I” plus Elaine, who supplies some of our finest merchandise and offers moral support.)
I’ll leave you panting in anticipation. May Whoever Is On Duty bless you and your endeavors. —Mary
