Thursday, January 28, 2010

Alibaba.com

I think I have come to the conclusion that Alibaba.com brings me into contact with 2 types people. The ones who want to buy, but will only pay minimal. Even a lousy $10 markup seems to scare people away. The other people it attracts, are other vendors trying to sell me the same items, that I myself, am selling.

I guess it is OK as another outlet, and way to promote my brand. I mean, it's already setup, and free. However, the thought of paying them $2000/yr to get even more of this type of nonsense is absurd.

No wonder eBay wanted to buy them. As we have already discussed, the only people making any money on eBay, is eBay.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Social Media

I was watching a video about how Social Media (twitter, facebook, blogs) have taken over the internet. I have also heard from another parent, how they bought a phone for their teenager, and she is never talking on the phone, but always text messaging. It appears that I have reached a point in my life, that has always worried me. When I was younger I listened to new music, kept up to date with movies, pop culture, and all things computer related. I was always at the cutting edge of the digital age. From a 300 baud modem on local DDials and Bulliten Board Systems through the internet, coding web pages, running my own servers etc, etc...

This whole Social Media scares me. I know nothing about it. I mean, I know what it is. I get the concept. I just... don't get it. Is it because I am too old? I am Generation X. This whole Generation Y ... hell, they even have Generation Z now. My 2 year old has a computer and ipod. He even gets "Yo Gabba Gabba" On Demand. He can even get Porn On Demand once he can learn to read.

I opened a Facebook and Twitter account. No intent on using them yet, but I was told I need to claim my brand name before someone else does. Makes sense. I guess we need to go out and piss on every virtual tree we can find, just to mark our territory. How silly, really.

So, I had opened the Twitter account, made a test "Tweet" and considered that project done for now. But then, a few days later I logged on for one reason or another, and saw that I had a follow. Yup, my very first follower.... WHY?!?!? Who cares about me and my pointless account? Hell, how did they even find me? I have no desire to follow them. (You can follow me at http://twitter.com/PortableFun but I don't think I am really that interesting)

I have enough noise in my life without adding extra Digital Noise into the mix. Don't these kids have anything better to do than tweet about whats for breakfast? Then again, am i just not getting it? Or, is it that I got it all 20 years ago, and I just don't care to do it all again (refer back to the ddial and bulliten board mentioned above). Same as with Comic Books and video games. Been there, done that 25 years ago. In fact, I came across a Top 10 list of most anticipated games of 2010. Would you believe that 8 of them were sequels to games that came out like 2-3 years ago? Just like movies, I really don't care, I just saw that.

I think i digressed about 5 paragraphs ago. Sorry about that. I just started writing, and figured I would vent, then throw it up on my blog. Thus doing the exact opposite of what this whole topic is about. Ah well. Whatever.

P.S. I had Clusters Cereal and Nestle's Hot Chocolate for breakfast. I'm sure you would care... if you were age 12-24.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Dear Comcast...

Let's talk.

A few days ago, I said Comcast sucks because of multiple poor experiences. I followed up with more problems they have with general customer service. See the comment someone at comcast wrote after my last post.

It appears, that they have a special department to go in, and for lack of a better word, apologize. Sorry, but that seems kinda pointless to me. They should take the money spent on consumer retention, and spend it on fixing the reasons people left in the first place.

Many of the reasons I would leave are:
1. Poor phone support
2. Poor signal
3. Technicians who shrug at why I get a pixelated screen
4. High prices because the ONE (and only) channel I need, Nick Jr., is 3 tiers up.
5. If I drop the cable, the cost internet either goes up, or gets slower.
5. Instead of making the internet faster for $40/mo make it slower for $20/mo

The many reasons I stay are:
1. The big trees block out satellites
2. No other cable companies

So much for competition, eh?

New Website Features

So, I have spent 50+ hours doing a complete rebuild of my Cell Phone website. On the front end, it looks pretty much the same. On the back end, it is night and day. Some of the flashy new features are a one page checkout, fixed SSL (see last post), fixed LightBox, better sitemap, randomized page header (logo), cross selling, full SEO support.

I'm really excited about it. I had trouble with getting a blog/articles to work properly (odd, since the old site had it working just fine) so that will come in the next update.

New Website is Online

With the complete rewrite of the Portable-Fun website, I accidentally made an amazing discovery. I was rebuilding and testing it on a standard domain. Once I was ready to make the site live, and made the change, I needed to enable SSL secure checkout. That is when I bumped into all kinds of problems, and I realized what has been happening to all my "lost" sales!

In short, an updated Firefox browser would run fine from start to end, so i never noticed a problem. However, everyone using ANY version Microsoft's Internet Explorer, or any other odd browser like Opera, Safari or Marathon was having all kinds of problems.

For example, depending on the browser and version, people would fill out all their information (Name, address, etc) only to later get an SSL warning about how they should not proceed! I noticed this because the new checkout process is different, so the warning showed up right away.

Other people had another problem with cookies. It would have the item in the cart right up to the switch over to SSL, and then the cart would magically be emptied! Since the new chat software lets me watch what people are doing, I have seen this time and again, but had no idea that the website, or SSL, was to blame.

Now, I don't know if this, and the whole website redesign, is going to really improve the overall sales. But, i do feel so much better, in knowing why I was actually loosing so many customers, and was able to fix the problem.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Comcast Sucks Pt. 2

I hate to harp on this, but there is a very fundamental marketing lesson to be learned here. You see, yesterday I was complaining about the service, and my repeated phone calls back to back because of my inability to get the department that i want.

After scheduling a Tech to come out on Friday, I get a call saying they were coming out today and not tomorrow. So, once again, I am calling them again about the same problem (just with a new spin on it). Oh, and as I have mentioned yesterday too.... they changed the menuing system again. I went from validation direct to customer service. This should be how it always is... well, almost. After I validated myself, the person came on asking me the same information all over again.

Idiots.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Local vs. National

It constantly amazes me how much hand holding local customers need. It's like, Internet customers fix their own problems. Local customers that I happen to meet, call me up over every friggin' problem. "This manual sucks", "I can't find the menu", or "It burst into flames".

Blah, blah, blah...

Internet people may call me up for something not working right. I tell them to ship it back (at their cost) and I rarely ever hear from them again. Amazing how they find someone more capable than them to fix their problems, before spending the $7.00 shipping.

Comcast Sucks

I hate Comcast. Whenever I have a problem (weekly) it always involves multiple phone calls. Mostly, because the automated system sucks huge balls. It hangs up on me, changes the menu prompts weekly (it seems).

When the phone answers, it is Shaquile O'Neil and Ben Stein greeting me. It is supposed to make me feel safer, and better for calling or something. All it has done, is extend my hate out to them. Each... and every time.... I need to call back and hear them.

Oh, any do i always call? Refresh signal mostly. My cable card always drops the signal. It has been over 3 years of constant problems with those damn cable cards. No one from the tech side likes them.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

ATT Phone System

I had to call ATT. The automated system sucked. I told it that I wanted to cancel a phone line. So, it said "Please hold" and then hung up on me. Nice.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

I just can't win

How can I make money when I don't have any money?!? I hate banks, and their fucking fees. Oh, and customers suck too. Bekow is a letter to one such moron.

Backstory: They placed an order in the morning. Later in the evening, they wanted to cancel. I explained I was going charge a $15 fee because of the money I was going to loose from the charge and the refund. Below is the letter that I needed to send them, because there was nothing else I could do:

I said you could have a refund, but this morning I wake up and see that you went to your credit card company and did a charge back. This means they take the amount directly out of my bank account. As a result of this action, I loose money on the original order, I loose money on the refund AND I now received a $35 bounce fee because I did not have an extra $175 sitting the account. So your daughter's "Oh, I don't want it anymore" cost me and my family about $50 that we don't have. I would really like to thank you for that.

Friday, January 8, 2010

What is taking so long?

I found that 3 things were really getting in my way of making all my ideas for busines growth happen.

1. Constant phone calls from salesmen, new customers, old customers, and people who can't actually read a freaking craigslist ad.

SOLUTION: I had hired a receptionist about 2 months ago.Amazing. Best money I spend all month. Now I only call back who I want to call back. She has also been trained on how to weed out the people who can't read, and not bother me with those.

2. Billing, tracking, accounting.

SOLUTION: Creating a do-it-all database in MS Access 2010. Also, promoting the receptionist to data entry. This will happen within the month.

3. Being a Daddy.

SOLUTION: I've come up with several solutions to this problem, but most end with jail time. I'm still working on this one....

Social Sites

In an attempt to give the impression I actually know what I am doing, I created a Twitter and FaceBook account for my company. I then threw a little marketing mojo at it, and created sub-domains that point to the pages. So, instead of www. going to my main site, doing twitter. or facebook. will send you over to those pages instead. Additionally, I linked the accounts and cross referenced all the pages/sites. Not only so people could find the connection, but mostly for Google Bots. While there is no actual content at this point, just getting it all setup is a positive first step to crush my competition.

Oh, and I also told my part time boss I wanted less hours. Going into work 3 days a week was really getting in the way of making real money. So I lowered it to 2 days, and announced to my wife that the extra day will be dedicated to my own business, in my office, don't bother me.

Paypal = Fraud

Since arguing with Paypal is like arguing with an elephant, I figured I would just post my complaint here.

Someone bought from ebay $150 item from me. I used their debit card to withdraw $140 that night. They later withdrew $17.50 from my account as that STUPID security deposit they hold on all my transaction for that account. You know, the one attached to my 100% positive feedback ebay account?

Since I only keep enough money in the account to cover active transactions, I get a bank bounce fee.

I hate that company more than words.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Sucking

FedEx is wasting my time. Couriers are wasting my time. Customers are wasting my time. Supplier is wasting my time. It seems the only person not pissing me off, is me! So, call me self centered or whatever, It's not my fault I provide everyone else the correct information to do their job, only to have them fuck it up. If it's not the guy on the left, its the guy on the right. I swear, I have no idea how any of my products make it to the customer on time, and in working order.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Inventory and Customer Databases

I have spent many hours looking around, and testing various databases. From main stream overpriced ones like Act! and Filemaker, to various no named crazy expensive specialty ones. In the end, the best one I found was Microsoft Access. I have a long list of reasons why I chose it.

1. It was the only one that could actually look like my original vision.
2. It was one of the few that could have a customer database, an inventory database, and an order tracking database... all in one. this will allow each customer to be tied to various items and orders.
3. It could work like an Excel database for tracking, and a simple to read form for customer extended information, both at the same time.
4. It already came with MS Office, so to me, it was free.
5. There is a Freely downloaded Beta copy of Office 2010 free for everybody until October 2010.
6. The 2010 version, once built, will work through a web browser, so my assistants can access it too.

The only real downside, was that it is a whole new language to program it to do what i wanted. So, this involves either paying a coder $300-400 on eLance.com to do it for me, or (like I usually prefer) spend a few hours learning how to do it myself.
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