SMTP Relay Server

I have had spotty on/off good/bad service from Comcast's built in relay server for years now. They finally broke what I had going on here, so I could not longer send my email out. After some searching, I found companies that will allow me to use them for relaying my email. The cost is quite affordable. I finally decided on DNSExit.com where I picked the 150 emails a day plan for a whole 1.99/mo. They actually had it less for a full year, but I wosn't sure if it was going to be worthe it or not. However, I CAN say that I no longer need to worry about my internet providers garbage anymore trying to restrict me running a business from a residential service.

Staples is Annoying

They keep sending me coupons for $25 off in Store purchases, and $25 off Online Purchases, when you spend $75 or more. My Problem is, The Local Store does not have everything I want, and the Online store doesn't have everything I want. The fact that the Copy/Print department does not count for the $75 or more, is just further insult to injury. In fact, I was at the copy/print counter, and told that my copy/print coupon, was only for stuff they need to print somewhere else. (?!?!)

I absolutely HATE that slogan "Easy". Using their services is NEVER easy. After this recent round of purchases, they have officially fallen onto my "Bad Business" list.

Business Cards

I would like to start by saying that I have been a professional printer for more than 20 years. So, I know a good, quality business card when I see it.

As I am changing the look of my company, it was time for new business cards. It was a toss up between Staples and VistaPrint. I guess Staples was having a 25% off sale, so I went with them. On the up side, submission online was quick and easy. They even had it ready by morning.

When I picked it up, I thought the paper was as thin (about 180gsm/45lb.), the blacks looked weak, color was dull (too much red added to the blues) and the glossy paper (cost extra) was barely noticeable. They cost $0.10 cents each for 500. I genuinely felt the proof paper I usually print on at home looked so much better, even without the glossy.

The only up side to paying $50, was that I did not have to waste my time cutting them out. Next time I will make sure to get the better quality (thick and glossy), even if it cost a little more.

Another Poor Experience

I clicked on a PPC link I saw somewhere. It was for http://www.packnboxnow.com and I had trouble with using the website. The wbesite is supposed to sell boxes. However, by default, it brings me to the custom page, where box prices jump from $0.34 cents, to over $7.00. So, I clicked on the Live Chat link. Read the poor customer service, and poor employee responsibilities that followed....

Chris: Hello, how can I help?
you: I selected 25 10x6x6 boxes. Your system says they cost $7.00+ each. Hmm... for laughs, I added a printed logo, and the price jumped to $34.00+ each. Now, given that I can buy the same box at uline.com for $0.34 cents each, and a stick on a label for another $0.03 cents... who actually buys your products? Clearly, I am missing something....
Chris: Yes, your missing everything.....
Chris: Do we have that size on our "Stock Box" page for the same price as ULINE??
Chris: Probably....
Chris: Do we have the same stock sizes as uline?? Probably not....
Chris: Do we have as many stocks sizes available as ULINE?? No
Chris: Does Uline make CUSTOM BOXES??? NO.
Chris: It clear that your size is a "Stock Box"
Chris: Not a custom box
you: But at a price jump of over $600 for 2 color, clearly, out of my league. I was really just looking for some boxes.
Chris: Yes, do you have any idea how much it cost for printing plates??
you: Worked in printing for 20 years. Yes, I know.
Chris: Great!
you: I thought it would be off a big digital press or something.
Chris: then you should know that flexo printing plates cost in the ballpark of $400-600 PER COLOR
you: Would cost less to buy a big rubber stamp.
you: Yeah, I know.
Chris: that's wjhat flexo plates are, big rubber stamps.
Chris: Rubber molds....
you: Well, I mean literally, a rubber stamp. Cost like $40 or so for a 4x4.
you: So, I assume you customers order large quantities, not 25....
Chris: Yes, you VERY correct on that.
Chris: Most people don't do custom printing on that small of a qty... WE do have the option to do it.
Chris: Clearly, it's going to cost a lot higher then pulling a bundle of "Pre-Made" boxes off the shelf!
you: Even your "bundle of boxes" cost just under $200. That was made me click the help button.
Chris: What??
you: Yeah, even standard 8x8x8 cost $190. Now I feel bad you had to pay for the click to get me onto your site.
Chris: CS-002 4 x 4 x 4 a bundle of 25 boxes cost $4.75??
Chris: are you on the "Custom Page"???
you: Not on the link I am at. says $182.00
Chris: You REALLY neeed to look at our "STOCK BOX" page
you: I dont know, I guess. I just clicked on the PPC link and this is where I went
Chris: http://www.packnboxnow.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductId=928e4174-b3e5-4c66-8a75-991200de7c4c&CategoryId=950565ee-4274-42ee-8cc3-9903015436a4&ISC_SiteName=StockBoxesNow
you: I click home, and it still takes me to the custom page
Chris: we sell 8 x 8 x 8 for $0.36/ea
Chris: DO you see a blue Tab that reads Stock BOXs??
you: that makes sense. You should see what your PPC thing is doing, because it seems to be a waste of mone sending people to take page.
you: Yes, I see it now.
Chris: OK!!!
you: Honestly, as a random customer, I am barely looking at it.
Chris: That's where you need to be looking!
Chris: A random customer should know the difference (if buying boxes) between what "standard" means and what "custom" means....
you: But I didn't realize I needed to make extra steps to get, where the link should have taken me.
you: I added the boxes I wanted, then added my zip code, and all my items disappeared from the cart.
Chris: maybe your should exit the browser then enter again and start over.
you: I think the "enter" key may be mapped to the remove button.... perhaps.
you: yeah, it is
you: when I type in the zip, and hit enter, it clears the cart
Chris: there is a drop down feild underneth the zip code are to choose method of transit it, are you doing that?
you: doesn't matter. point is, your website is in need of some serious redesign. You can upset, assuming that I am an idiot. And that's fine. But, assuming that I am, the site should be redesigned to make a sale from an idiot.
you: I just licked a link, and wanted to buy some boxes.
you: the fact that I am still here, not able to easily, means you are loosing customers.
you: How many others just gave up and went away.
Chris: you would be the 1st.
Chris: We get RAVE's eveyday about how easy our site is.
Chris: to navigate.
Chris: all the options
Chris: We have a stady gowth of 30% every year for the last 4 years.
Chris: We must be doing something right??
you: But... I just went to uline, typed in 8x8x8, the boxes came up, I gave my zip, and I am ready to checkout.... and they cost less.
Chris: Maybe you just need to go to your local UPS store and pull someting off the shelf?
you: Just think of the growth it could be if you listened to the one customer who was the idiot...
Chris: Then why search for a new vendor?
you: I just wanted to look at your boxes from the link I saw on a website.
Chris: OK, now you know who do go through if you need "Custom Boxes". meaning a size that uline doesn't carry, or if you want custom printed logos.
Chris: ULine is great to use if all you need is 25 stock boxes.
Chris: Everyone, everywhere can do that.
Chris: Thank you for your time.
Chris: Have a good day!

This is not about the price of the boxes Chris, this is about your company is paying for a link that goes to page that does not meet the customer needs, then has a serious problem with checking out. Rather than understanding that, and bringing it to a supervisors attention, Chris gets all upset at me. Chris, I am glad you are not on my payroll.

PPC Final Thoughts

I have officially established that Pay Per Click advertising on Google and Yahoo, and other Product Search engines like Shopzilla, Bizrate, Pricegrabber, etc are a complete waste of money. For the past 2 weeks, I put about $150-$200 spread out across 5 or 6 different websites like that and discovered them to be nothing but garbage.

I would guess that only about 75% of the clicks they say I had, actually made it to my website... the rest just disappeared without any trace, except for the promise by these companies that the people were real.

Of all the hundreds and hundreds of clicks that I supposedly had, I made "0" sales. I make a ton more money from CraigsList. Despite eBay's outrageous fees, at least they brought in several sales.

PPC Conclusion

PPC is a waste of money. I thought this a year and a half ago, and now I am positive. All it did was cost me a ton of money. It doesn't seem to matter which service I tried, they all sent me worthless traffic.

PriceGrabber

It is now like 2 weeks, and Pricegrabber.com STILL has not added me to their search engine. Not that it much matters. I am going to try and cancel the whole thing.

Shopzilla

Shopzilla's records say they sent me 165 visitors, but my logs only show 20. This is the same kind of garbage that Become.com was doing to me. Charging me for people who do not make it to my site, for whatever reason. Just as bad, it appears that 8 of the 20 that made it, were for non-USA countries, so they mean nothing to me anyway.

The Find

I had signed up with thefind.com a few weeks ago. I had trouble with their search engine, where it listed all my items with wrong addresses, so the links did not work. However, they seems to have fixed it. They did not send me any traffic yet, that I can see. So they are just as useful as all the pay-per-click sites. At least they are free.

Bonanzle

Last night I signed up with Bonanzle.com and misspelled my email address, so I could not sign in. So, I emailed the site managers. By morning, they had corrected the problem, and activated my account. It is so refreshing to get immediate results.

Shopzilla

Shopzilla took 5 days to list my items. In the 1st 24 hours, they sent me an amazing 3 visitors. Of course, my logs do not show that traffic. Nice.

PreSchool

After many, many years of juggling work, business, and family, today my son finally started preschool! Despite the whole "Proud Dad" thing, this also means I get an extra 6 hours a day, 3 days a week that I did not have before, that I can now spend on my business.

Like, this morning, I have already gotten lots of junk cleared off my desk. I also plan on using this new found time to start exercising daily. Not that I am the fattest guy in the world, I definately feel old and out of shape (but wait, round is still a shape, right?)

GetClicky

I signed up with GetClicky.com which is a website analytics company. Same thing as Google Analytics, but much more useful. Personally, I have never found Google's to be perticularly good. I mean, the stats always seemed remedial. Now, even though GetClicky is free, I opted for the pay version at $9.95/mo, at least for now, to get better idea of who is coming and going. For example, Google says that very few people come to this blog. While that may be true, GteClicky points out that I get RSS Feed subscribers that Google never mentioned before. Also, I can now see what people are actually doing whne they get to my websites, mainly my store, which is very important to me.

The Find

I sent an email to thefind.com letting them know that all the links to my products on their website are wrong. At some point today, I found that they corrected the feed. I now have one product listed as good, and one listed as bad. No worries.... noone is coming to my website from over there anyway.

Yahoo Search

After spending time today trying to get a refund from Yahoo, I get an email tonight telling me that I have been kicked off their service or Violating the terms of service. WTF?

Become.com

Become.com was the second to let my items go live (Amazon was the first). I was sent a personal email letting me know that the account was approved, and that I has entered the wrong intomation into a field, so tht it would display my name incorrectly. I was happy that someone took the time to notice, and tell me.

It is now several hours after I went live, and I have noticed a few things.

1. After I made the change, it was not reflected on live site, so everyone continues to see the company name wrong.

2. Someone used a keyword that technically shows my products, but in actuality, has nothing to do with my products. So basically, I am displaying for searches that my products will not work for. I just paid them $.75 for a dead click.

3. They gave me a phone number, that gets dropped into a voicemail / automated phone hell. The calls go nowhere.

4. It says I can change my bidding on a per item basis, but I can only see a category level change.

5. All my products are the same, but the system seems to have recategorized them into different groupings. Not sure why.

6. They say they sent 9 customers to me, but Google Analytics say they only sent 3. Hmm... Even worse, Become says they sent me a visitor since I last refreshed the window, but I am sitting here looking at my website live, and I saw no customer come in. Could they be skimming off the top? I will definitely confirm this, and let you know.

**UPDATE** - Yeah, I just refreshed the window, and it said I have another visitor ($.80) but no one came to the website.

So far, when my $25.00 expires, I will likely not renew. However, they did send 9 visitors in about 6 hours. However, I dominate in the search, as I have little competition. The bottom line seems to be, if they can get me a sale for $25.00, then I make money. If they can't, then it's not worth it.

Search Engine Analysis

I have started to push my products via Shopping Search Engines. I have done a little and there over the years, but I never did an actual analysis by signing up for several at once, and see how the experience is. Over the next few days, I will be documenting my results.

Google Base Feed - I've been using this one for years, because it is free. It's slow as dirt to get listed, there is no rhyme or reason to where your items get placed (sometimes I am in top 10, sometimes I am nowhere to be seen at all). From long time experience, I can say that it drives me 20-90 people per day. This is fine for Free, but I feel I need to do better. Much of the traffic is lookers anyway, only good for brand recognition.

Shopping.com - Took about 45 minutes to sign up, setup the customized feed, and pay them the $50 to start. It says I need to wait 24 hours to process the feed.

Become.com - Took about 45 minutes to sign up, setup the customized feed, and pay them the $50 to start. It says I need to wait 24 hours to process the feed.

PriceGrabber.com - Took about 45 minutes to sign up, setup the customized feed, and pay them the $50 to start. The real problem with them, is it says 3-5 days to wait for setup to be done. Given that they are pulling in all the Yahoo people right now, I assume this will be 4+ days before I get any results from them.

SortPrice.com - Took about 45 minutes to sign up, setup the customized feed, and pay them nothing to start. Not only was this refreshing, but so was the lack of PPC on the system. It was a flat rate of Free for a basic setup with limited items, or $145/mo. for all site items listed. I am looking to speak with them before signing up for anything, but based on what I see, as long as they can deliver traffic, this could be the best option.

Bing Cashback - This is the only website of this group that required State and Federal Tax ID's. This is because their system is for USA sellers only. The service, once accepted, is free to be part of. However, the cashback part means that after 60 days (or so) they will withdraw a percentage of the sale, that You decide, and give it to the buyer. So basically, they will list you on the search for free as a cashback particitent, you decide of you want to give back 1%, 5%, or 10% (completely your choice), and if you make the sale and there are no returns or whatever, then you agree to pay the customer that amount in 2 months. The money gets put into the customers Bing account, which gets saved until they request the payout. After supplying the information requested, I need to wait to be allowed to join in and be given a service representative. I'm not quite sure yet where Microsoft is making their money just yet, but I am sure it's in there somewhere.

Amazon.com - Even though I've had a rough history with Amazon, I figured business is business, so I signed up for their own search thing. Please note, this is not to be a seller with them, simply a generic PPC that happens on their system.

Their signup was by far the easiest, and fastest. There was no Up front fee, which is the only reason I chose to try them. It would be billed after the fact. They were also the only ones to accept the Google feed I already had.

Sadly, of the 660ish items I uploaded to them, they denied everything but 20 or so Bluetooth headsets. The reason, was that the category was closed. Sure would have been nice if the system told me that up front, instead of saying it was A-OK for me to list in Technology and Cell Phones. Once again, Amazon lied to get me in the door, and then left me with nothing in the end.

I decided to pull off the 20 items it did accept for 2 reasons. one was that my prices were considerably higher than the same items already listed on Amazon (one of the main reasons I won't sell on there again), and the other reason was that the system had it listed in the wrong categories (it put some bluetooth in office supplies,others went into sporting goods, etc).

Yahoo Product Search

I took the time, about an hour, to sign up with Yahoo's Product Shopping Search Compare Engine. I signed up, collected a feed the way they wanted it, uploaded it, paid the $50 to start, and then when I was finally finished, I was greeted by a big red Alert box telling me that Yahoo Product Search would be shut down in 4 days. I would now need to sign up with PriceGrabber.com

Nice. Really fucking nice.

Adwords

I have added my Computer Repair Company to Google's ScamWords and DAMN that's expensive. I need to keep a tight watch on it for the next day to make sure I don't overkill. It is currently setup for my immediate area, and only a straight google search. But, despite all our hard work a few months back, I show up as #2 of Google Maps for a town that I am not even in. In my own town, I am #9 on page 2. WTF?? I couldn't find it anywhere else.

New eBay Fees

eBay is the only company I know that regularly comes out with WORSE pricing, and advertises like it's a good thing! What cost me $35 today, will cost me $65.00 in 2 months. Nice.

Charge Backs

I disputed 2 Credit Card chargebacks. Tht was a waste of 2.5 hours of my life that I will never get back. No wonder companies just don't bother to fight it. what a waste of time.

Lost Sales

I have aquired about $12,000 woth of sales this week that I can't fulfil because I can't find a suppier who has the items I need. What a major suck.

New Website Down

The new website is now down, and I pu the old on back online. The problems were many. The worst of it, that I failed to understand the full extent of, was that by uploading my item database fresh, all my old links that had long since been on search engines, were now dead. Even worse, Google could not see the pages on my new site. It would work fine for browsers, but whatever SEO program I installed, created a deadly mess. Needless to say, after weeks of trying to get everything to play well together, I gave up.

I now need to start over, completely from scratch. I just need to be more careful about the link names.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What to Sell?

I strongly recommend items with low return rates. For example pots and pans. I also suggest items without many parts and accessories that can break. For example, headphones can arrive not working. By contrast, a quality chess set that may have dozens of peices, is unlikely to arrive broken. Personally, after selling board games for 2 years, I never had a single missing peice, or dissatified customer. The real problem there was mcuh time spent on inventory, and low sales.

Something like a game or application on CD will likely arrive without scratches, but a game console itself is just begging for problems.

Choose wisely.

People Piss Me Off

I'm not sure who upset me more, employees who lead to expensive mistakes, or customers who are pains in the ass.

I think the customers who are pains in the ass.

Please note: customers that annoying on the front end of the sale, will likely be annoying on the back end of the sale. If the sale ever does start heading south, due to the customers fault, just give the money back (if needed) and walk away.

I had someone who wanted to buy a phone, buy was being a bit overbearing before the sale. I tried to justify it in my mind, and went ahead and ordered him a new phone based on his request. I took a deposit (always get a cash deposit to get them financially involved), and ordered the phone. 2 days ago he picked it up. At that time, he started whining about it not "Being New". I told him he was buying a phone off CraigsList from someone's driveway. The phone works, don't bust my balls about minor flaws. He agrees, pays and leaves.

2 days later (today) he calls up saying the phone works fine, but they want a new one. This guy just pissed me off, and out came my dark side, that would otherwise get me fired. Since I could not remember exactly what I said to him, and I knew he was going to be a jerk, I just told him I would refund it. When he got here, I handed him his money back, took the phone and walked away, all of 3 seconds. I don't think I really needed to say anything else.

Since I prefer to correct future situations when something goes wrong, I made up a small sign that people will see during purchase:

Our Refund Policy: Please Choose Carefully. We don't give refunds if you simply change your mind or make a wrong decision. You can choose between an exchange ot credit where goods are faulty, wrongfully described, different from a sample shown to you or don't do what they are supposed to do.

I have a similar one on my website, because people would be all "oh, I dont like it, it's too thick". Well, too bad. That's why I don't sell on Amazon.com. i would spend more money on dumb shit like that,

Here is the thing, while I do belive a customer should have the right to exchange or refund, the reality is that when it cost someone small like me money to aquire the goods on your behalf, refunds and exchanges cost me over $100 each time, and that really adds up fast. that is why no cell phone place will do that kind of thing. It's also why stores like Circut City are not with us anymore. Dumb customers drive businesses out of business.

I took a huge hit earlier this month due to one problem or another. It simply needs to stop. No more nice guy.

Nissan.com is not Nissan?

I was looking for a car, went to Nissan.com and was shocked to see Nissan Computers instead. I followed the threads about Nissan Motors assault on the domain name and I really must applaud the stand taken by Mr. Nissan to hold onto his family name from the corporate machine. Go take a look, then follow the link about the court case. It was quite amazing what the guy had to fight through. Glad he won the case. I hate corporate anything....

How Will I become rich?

I think, in the end, it comes down to trial, and error. I had evaluated what I tried, and how it worked, then kept what worked, and dropped what didn't. At the very least, seeking alternatives.

It should be fairly obvious that I have not posted in a month because I have been totally slammed with Christmas orders (and Christmas Fraud). So, business comes first.

About a month ago I hired a receptionist for $30 per week. I don't get that many calls, but sometimes they are sales, but mostly they are people I dont want to talk to anyway. Like, she saved me from the screaming customer because of a shipping error days before Christmas. It was fixed, and she has her present, but only after she called up swearing. That call alone was worth the $30 to avoid.

I also dropped my old supplier. They pissed me off for the last time. The new one isn't perfect, but so much better than before.

In the end, this month was likely the busiest I ever had from single sale customers. A little annoying, but a necessary evil.

Into the next few months, I have a few tricks up my sleve that I expect will make a huge difference, as they are deviations, yet compliments, to what I already have going on.

For webstore owners, I recommend LiveZilla for a chat program. It's amazing free software. So much so, I can even watch people's screen as they are browsing my website. Really neat stuff.

Anyway, gotta run. Enjoy the holiday. Let's do something different next year. It will be fun.

First Data Merchant Services

Abssolutely sucks. Always have, always will. Slow deposits into my account, getting information is like pulling teeth, and you need to be a year of problem/solution ninja-like experience to figure out their LinkPoint software when something isn't quite right. Terrible, just terrible.

What prompted me to post about it? I was out and needed a phone authorization on a credit card, which I got. I came home, went to process the actual transaction (which I would not have known about, if I did not happen to know it), and I need the actual credit card information. Call First Data, and they have no clue for 5-7 days what that information was. Nice....

Holiday Sales

While my traffic has gone up, the sales still a small fraction of what I had hoped it would be, I feel terrible for anyone trying to do this stuff in a down encony. On the up side, when this economy recovers, this is going to be so much easier, and profitable, to do.

Partnerships

Partnerships are so important to a successful venture. As I look back at the first 2 years of my business, I realized I partneres with so many bad people/businesses just to make a dollar, or to say that I do business with them. I don't think I do business with any of the companies I started with anymore.

So, I guess my point is, while I understand the need to do what has to be done to get ahead, but if you feel something is out of place, or you are being taken advantage of, then you need to put the stop to the association before it you more thaqn it helps.

Credit Card Fraud

I have been assualted this holiday season with credit card faud. Most likely, from the same individual.

They are not doing one, and hoping it gets through. They submit 20 orders at once, using the same information, and think that it will be getting through. It is painfully obvious.

The real issue I have with it, is that no one cares. I most recently called my merchant services fraud department. He said he didn;t care, and that I should call each of the credit card companies directly myself. i explained I was not going to take 15-20 minutes per card just to let them know. It's not my responsibility.

So, once again, I know of like 10 compromised card numbers, and nothing well happen to thye people doing this.

Hired Staff

I have hired a copy writer and 2 designers on an as-needed basis. I am hoping the 2 designers can breath some life into my effective, but admittedly dull, website. Why 2 designers? Because they both have different styles that I felt could blend together into something. Each has their own strengths that I would like to play off of. Since I am a designer myself (then why hire out?!?! Time.) I am not worried about the varying styles creating a mess.

I will also have the designers spend some time on invoices, envelopes, stationary, etc.Because remember, everything you do, is marketing.

In my case tonight, I wrote a letter (with the help of the writer) to a customer who's first order was $12,000, followed by another $2,000 order. So, I wanted to send a thank you letter to him for his business. I realized I did not have stationary, or an envelope to put the letter into. I felt a little generic and disinterested, as I printed them out.

Best Shipping Practices

For small items, Use PayPal to send First Class.

When possible, use USPS Priority, because it is often cheaper than the rest.

UPS is a joke. Seriously. The online label creation sucks, and the billing sucks too. Not to mention the fact those crooks still owe me like $150 that I will never see again.

The best thing to do, it setup a business account with FedEx. Ask to speak with a Sales Representative about special pricing. When he calls you back, talk up a storm about how you use UPS and USPS right now, but would prefer to use them instead. Unfortunately, the prices are higher than what you already pay, so you really need a discount to start with, so that you can justify the transition. If you do it right, they will low ball everyone else, and you can use them for everything. The billing is automatic, and the shipping label creation is a breeze.

Posting On Yellow Page Websites

I've mentioned this before, but it needs repeating. In 3 months:

Number of Calls From Customers: 2

Number of Calls from Salesmen: 893

PeachTree

I went on their website and found a free webinar I could sign up for, to get a personalized walk through. Thinking that they actually cared, I signed up. Instead, I got some bullshit email from a $7.50/hr salesman. I need to reply. With all this hard work I have been doing to learn about marketing and getting customers, I had no choice. The following is my reply:

I am still waiting for that "Free Webinar" that I signed up for several days ago. You know, the one that would have helped me decide if your product was right for my business. But, yeah, generic SPAM that says "Buy My Product" works just as well too. I especially like that part that says "Dear John," then nothing else. Again, compelling, and competent. I can't wait to buy now....

I never did hear back from him.

Western Union Sucks Too

So, I had lost my Bank Card, so I needed to order a new one. I had thought that $1000 would be a nice low value to send through Western Union.... Nope. They asked me a million questions, ran a credit check, and left me feeling quite violated. I told the operator that I send thousands of dollars through their system every week, and just because I needed to use a different card, this completely ruined any level of privacy I could have had. Gawd, i hate using them sometimes.

CopyWriters

I posed on CraigsList for a blog/advertising/copywriter. I said the following:

I am in need of someone, preferably in the New Haven area, that is willing to come to my office and write articles, product descriptions and advertisements about Cell Phones. After you have become familiar with the products and style, you would no longer need to come to my office. This is less about being technical writing, more about creative writing about a technical product. If you have an interest, send some short samples with hourly desired wage. The days and times are semi flexible, but I prefer evenings for a few hours each, starting at 8pm. This would be regular, ongoing work.

10 people replied so far, and NOT ONE could follow my direction. I was so appauled at the garbage I was being sent, I started emailing them back pointing out why their email sucked. I'm sorry, but I expected SO much more from writers. The designers followed direction better than the writers did. Even the person that said they followed details didn';t do what i asked. Amazing.

What a mess

It is incredibly difficult to run a business when you have no money. It seems that all the friggin' time, my personal money is used to buy phones, and money from phones is used to pay all my bills. It gets terribly confusing, and I am not in the situation yet that allows me to separate my business from my personal finances. I all just seems to come rushing in at me in waves. I know I am making plenty of money, but it is so hard to keep track of.

For example, I had a small profit pile of $120. But, I need some ofice supplies and whatnot. So, I take the money to Staples and buy $100 worth of stuff. This puts $20 in my pocket, $100 to staples, and I wait on $33 in rebates. My wife then runs over a screw, blows the tire, and copntinues to drive not noticing she is ruining the tire. So the $20 of profits, and $113 of business money, is now used to buy her a new tire. Now, my next wave of profits, needs to be used to pay for her tire until she has the money to pay me, and the business back.

Are you confused yet? I sure am....

Quicken 2010

I used Microsoft Money. But since microsoft has stopped making the product, I decided to jump to Quicken, now that they inlcuded a fully supported importation of data. I have ound Quicken 2010 to be terribly buggy, where it will crash randomly. Apparently, my 5 accounts at one bank seem to make it self destruct. At one point, I told it to do something, and even knowing full well it was about to destory all my business data, would not let me escape from the command. I just watched it destory hours of work while I banged on the escape key.

I had watched a video where someone at Quicken said "It is so easy to use our software. I can bring your entire financial data up to date, in the same time it takes to go for ice cream.

Wow, that some long trip. I've been at this shit for hours now.

TV to Watch

If I failed to mention it yet, go to www.gotbiz.tv which is a website that hosts 6 or 7 weekly shows about starting and running your own business. It is only about a month old, so there isn't a ton of content yet, but there are a few hours worth of shows to watch.

Next Book

The next big book you should start reading is Chet Holmes - The Ultimate Sales Machine. Unless you are reading one of the other books I have suggested, you should stop what your doing, and go get this one. Worth every penny and then some. Sometimes it feels like it gets a little repetitive and does not move off the topic, but then starts shooting off information, ideas, and concepts at a pace faster than I can mentally grasp. I am listening to the audiobook in my car (like usual) and I find that I keep pausing it, so that I can think about what was just said, and what I can do to implement the idea for my own business. Great, great stuff. This is one of those super long, amazing, stop what your doing and change course, type of books. It is 11(!!!) Cd's and could have easily been 5 or 6 seprate books all dealing with different aspects of your business. But, the fact that it only cost you a few dollars, and will give a lifetime of information is another one of those great finds.

More eBay B.S.

I just confirmed something I had noticed before. If I say a Buy It Now winner must pay right away, that does NOT count if they make an offer that is accepted. Well, now I gotta chanse this person down for the payment. Another waste of my energies.

Seriously. I am collecting all this information as things to NOT do anymore.

TradeKey.com

While looking into setting up TradeKey.com, they want almost $400 fo like 10 items. Damn, and I thought ebay was off their rocker. Alibaba.com is at least 50 for free. Of course, then they want the big bucks to go over that. Oh well. I will keep trying. At some point, I will find somnething that is actually worth the cost of entry.

ExtortionPal

Apparently ExtortionPal is holding onto 10% of ALL my transactions. Even books... why the fuck are they holding onto a reserve for books?!? Apparently, come december, I am going to be sent a whole mess of ebay money. What a waste of my energies. I am lucky if I make 10% profit after eBay fees, and now they are holding onto that too. Seriously, I've got to get away from all these large online venues for services. Amazon, eBay, PayPal, iOffer, Google... they are all nothing but automated systems designed to stop me from making an honest living. I swear, I would have less troubles if I sold crack on the corner.

Cancelling iOffer

Apparently, my account was suspended because I sell generic phones tyhat look like brand phones. Oh, for the love of god....

So I look up how to cancel the account and get my held money back. It saiys to click the cancel button... of course the button is not actually linked to anything. Fucking Nice. Further waste of my time and energies...

iOffer Sucks

One of my items was removed because it looks like a Sony phone. Whatever.

I owe then $2.50 from a sale that the buyer backed out of. Since they have really shitty cancellation policy, (ie: I can't do it) they suspended my account until I paid it. Oh, for christ sake.... they make like they are the bee all end all.... 2 months later, all I have had are people asking me to ship to various european countries. What a waste of time they are.

I know that any of the other sites are just as obnxious and wasteful of my time. I just wish my own website had a bit more traffic. I need to get down and dirty with the advertising again. I've noticed that the traffic has slowed since I haven't made a video in about a month. Good to know.

PayPal can officially Go Fuck Thelselves

"PayPal is temporarily holding in reserve 10.00% of the value of all your transactions on Oct. 2, 2009. The funds will be available to you in 60days."

Dear Paypal,
I am trying to run a business. Holding 10% for 60 days, on TOP of the 10% Ebay and Paypal already extorted from the sale in Fees, Will put me out of business. If I, and all other sellers go out of business, you will not make anymore fees. This is why I stopping selling on Amazon, because of a stunt like this..

As a not-so-valued customer of 8+ years, I will no longer accept your form of currency for my products. I will also proudly display your logo with a big red X through it. Paypal, Go fuck yourself.

eBay Fees

Holy Fuck... I had this $300 phone here for a few weeks now, and figured maybe I could sell it on eBay. Which worked, it was sold in about 24 hours.... then came the fees...

Insertion: Free
Buy It Now: .25
Reserve: $2.00
Final Value: $19.99
PayPal: $8.85

Total Rape: $31.09

Whenever I need to use them, I always learn the same lesson over and over again. The only person making any money on ebay, is ebay.

Damn It

Damn Chinese completely ruined ebay for us small sellers. I went to see if selling like 10 phones on ebay was worth it, but they are selling these phones for the same prices that I pay. That makes the effort and profit so totally not worth it.

Then, over of iOffer all I get are people who ask me if I ship to (insert foreign country here). This means I have to log in just to say "No" because they can't read the part that says USA Only.

Of course, CraigsList isn't much better. I can't tell you how many called I get for a Nokia N97, when the list clearly says "Not a Nokia Product".

Google Sucks Now Too

Google has gotten into the game of shutting down my abilities to make money. Earlier, I had posted about how multiple websites for the same items is bad. Well, that put me in their cross-hairs and they took notice of little ol' me. I was shut off Google Base for several days. After making a stink about find out WHY I was blacklisted, it turns out that I sell iphone copies. Blah, blah, blah... what-EVER. I think I sell like 2 a year off the site. Get over it people. It's not that big of a deal.

I swear, I would have less hassle if I sold drugs on the corner. The phones work as advertised. At no point do I say APPLE, so what's the problem? Ebay used to get on my ass about it. So I removed them. Then it was watch phones. So I removed them. Then it was Sony, so I removed them all and closed my ebay store. And I am quite happier without their fees... fuck you very much.

Oh, yeah... so what did I do about this google garbage? Shit, that was easy. I just opened a new free account. Problem solved. I had thought about complaining some more, but I figured that would only cause more trouble.

In fact, I am thinking that soon I will need to open a new website to compete with my exisiting one. This way, if one has this crap again, the other will still bring in money.

It appears that Google Base was good for about 60-80 clicks, and 1-3 sales per day. Given that is free, the odds are not too bad.

Yellow Page Listings

Holy FUCK... don't ever sign up for those free listings unless you want to get bombarded by telemarketers who want to sell you ad listings.

Cool Tool

This looks terribly useful.

http://craigslistadtracker.com/

Google Base

I was trying to get my ioofer feed onto google, but as it turns out, they will not allow the same store with 2 locations. So, mental note: create a second and third company for the whole google base thing.

Big Client

I landed a huge order witha new client today. It's one of those dream orders. It is a big computer sales company, who's customers involve government contracts. They needed a bunch of phones, and the guy calls one company and while they could do the job, the salesman wasn't so great. Then he calls me (number at the top of the website) and by the end of the call, I had him sold. After I confirm that everything he needed was possible, in the time frame he needed, he proceeds to pay for a $12,000 order of 50 phones. My profit on that was..... well.... a lot.

It's funny how things go sometimes. After I did a complete breakdown of how long I epected the whole order to take me to take from beginning to end, then added in my profit per phone, so that I had a number I was happy with. Then, thinking about how you should always aim high.... I doubled the profit margin, added some extra just for the hell of it, and sent the proposal. He accepted it without even much looking at it. He just marked it up again and sent it to his customer, who OK'ed it within 10 minutes. I was floored. See? Always ask for more than you expect, you just may get it.

How to get more from your blog

I am currently reading about "How to get more from yopur blog" and it says to get comments, I should simply... ask for them. Hmm... let's see if that works.

Credit Card Fraud

I get a ton of Credit Card fraud. I have no idea how automated systems with hundreds of orders are able to keep up with it all. I mean, when they are wrong, it is usually pretty obvious, but how does a company like Walmart online even know? Does anyone even care?

How it Should always be

I had gone to the beach for the first time in 21 years. My wife dragged me. I was there about 20 minutes when my blackberry announced I had email. Upon checking it, I saw that I sold a phone. Nice.

iOffer

So, I just finished setting up my items on iOffer.com. The good news, is that it worked. Bad news, is that it was not as expected. the HTML had issues, and now I keep getting emails asking the same dumb question "Does this phone work on (insert service here)."
On the plus side, I can have it submit to Google Base and Google Analytics.

I take that back. The Analytics does not seem to be seem properly, and the Base Feed has the wrong URL attached to each item. Fucking Balls.... it's always something.

Blogger Buddy

I added a Widget to Windows 7 that lets me simply type in a little window and push send. Maybe this will improve getting my random thoughts sent to the masses (all 5 of you). Of course... I don't have anything to say right now.

Local Listings

It appears that when you register your company with these free local listing sites like yellowpages.com, magicyellow.com etc... some add you without further contact. Some want email verification. All that is fine, but then you get the ones that call to "verify" but all they look to do is upsell you on advertising. Then if you say no, of course, want to know why you don't want your business to succeed?

I had listed 2 of my companies where I am looking to get local customers, so these yahoo's (another company that just called, by the way) think that it's OK to call me up and bother me.

In my experience, paid advertising does NOT work. I mean, it will make sales and all, and drive traffic, but if I gotta pay them now too, where is MY profit? I'm better off with free, then get what I can get. It's like, why pay eBay all those dumb assed fees? They are making money, not me.

eCrater Sucks

They do not accept HTML, which makes the 600+ detailed descriptions for my items useless. I decide to go with Title and Description being the same text, thinking that any listing is better than no listing. After waiting several days to have my listings approved, they were denied. After sending an email asking for help, and specifying that they were making the wrong decision based on my images, they simply sent me a canned response that did not help, or even answer the question. So I sent them this:

Thank you for not fully reading my question, answering with a canned response, and not helping in any way. I can see that the rumors are true about the poor service on eCrater. I do not sell on ebay either because of their poor seller policies as well. I will simply take my business elsewhere.

iOffer.com accepted my listings WITH the HTML code, and no complaints.

Viruses Suck

I was on vacation for a week. I had planned to do some work around the house, go to the beach, play with my son, etc.... Instead, I spent the 1st 3 days processing orders, the 4th day cataloging and tracking orders, receipts, and other bussiness stuff I needed to do. The last 3 days were spent cleaning up the mess left behind by chura.pl virus. Not only was my server infected, but it also modifies the code in html, php and asp. It passes it along to anyone who visits the web page.

Before I had realized what happened, I was doing a fresh installation of Windows, and that became corrupted, and I had to start all over again. To make all matters worse, Google and Firefox then blacklisted me from serving any pages, so my website was down for several days... unless you used internet explorer. Like all the best MS products, it had no clue what was going on.

But, once the virus was removed from the pages, and the ban was lifted, it was back to web traffic as usual. I sold a couple phones today.

PEBKAC404.com is Back!

I am sure most of you have no clue what PEBKAC404.com is. This was my first blog from many years ago. Well, something happened last year, and the software running things was damaged. While the data was left intact, I just never had the time to fix it.

#7 on this weekend's To-Do list was to finally fix it. Well, shit, what is it?

WAY back in the day, I worked with a complete moron of an employee. Every day when I thought should could not possibly come up with anything stupider to say or do... she did. While sitting around making fun of her, we came up with PEBCAK404 which means Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair - Error Page 404. So, I started the website originally posting all the stupid stuff she ever said. Over the years, it just migrated into all the stupid things I came across in my day to day life.

I have been saving up dumb things over the past year, so I have new content to post, however I will wait a little while, letting you go back and enjoy the stupidity that was my life.

Enjoy.

Question

This was brought up to me during that phone call, and it is also #2 on my list of things to do, so I will put this out there:

I keep inventory that I use to sell locally. I advertise on CraigsList. People call me up, ask a few questions, and if they sound like real prospects, I set up a meeting with them to show them what I have, that meets their needs. I also sell to local stores and other local salesmen of mine. I also make sales off the website. So, basically, I have several established avenues of sales.

I am looking for anyone that a few extra dollars, looking for their own stream of passive income, that generates 10-20% profit every few weeks. It works like this: Lets say you invest $500 in my company of selling cell phones. I would buy 5 phones for $100 each, sell them on the street for $160, and I give you $20. If I sell it for $150, I would still give you $20. Thees 5 phones I bought with your money, are predetermined up front, so when they sell, they sell. I know my market, and do not buy items that people don;t want, or are over priced.

This gives me the opportunity to carry a wider variety of products locally, thus making me more money. I usually carry 10-20 different phones with me on a busy day. As long as the price is right, which I know up front, these items usually only stay around for a few weeks to 2 months. Like, Blackberries, only last 5 minutes. Generic Nokia and Samsung items take a little longer, but they all have a market.

So, I'm just putting it out there, if anyone is interested. I've been doing this for several months now, and everybody is happy. I rotate the products around so that everyone gets a chance to make a quick buck. If your interested, reply, email, or call. the number is on one of the other retail websites.

Top of the Google Search

On Saturday, I released the first of my new keyword's and marketing. By Wednesday I was in the top 10 (If not top 5) of Google Base's (Froogle) search engine for ALL 600+ of my items! This also means that many of my items are in the top 5 of regular Google as well. My website traffic is higher than it has ever been. Like, a single day now would have taken me several weeks before. Sweet.

Of course, it has also turned into sales. Nothing staggering, but of course, I am about to hit week 2, so i will take anything I can get. Oh another thing that seemed to have surprised me, is that if you search for my company name a week ago in Google, you would never have found me. Even though I own www.Portable-Fun.com I was no where to be found. Today, search for Portable Fun and I jumped to #1 and #2 out of 48 Million other pages. Not bad for 1 week.

How...Odd...

Whenever I don't post on here for awhile, feeling like nobody actually reads this stuff, someone always comes along telling me how much they enjoy it. So, thanks for the completely unexpected phone call Tarik. I officially have my own stalker now.

Ah, I'm just fucking with ya.

Tarik called me looking for ideas on how to make money. I thought I offered him an idea that would make him several thousands, but he missed the road signs in big neon letters. You see, he thought I was offering a way to make $20 a clip from the trunk of his car. He missed the making hundreds and thousands part by getting OTHER people to sell at $30 a clip from the trunk of THEIR car.

Now, sure, I could be more specific right now, but that's just not as fun. So, why don't you think about it for a little while, and get back to me. And for crying out loud, stop thinking INSIDE the box.

PS - While I'm not referring to porn, I'm telling ya, porn is totally the way to go! Cell phones and porn.....

Traffic Geyser

I am new at it, but spent much time reading and studying before submitting anything. After about a week, my rankings and traffic were poor, so I started going out to all the different links that TG said were successful. More than half of the successful uploads, apparently, are no where to be found. Even, simple, no password sites seem to have no clue about me.

There are the sites that seem to be not functioning properly like odeo.com that say my feed is already submitted, but it's nowhere to be found. Then, when I add in the fact that many sites don't want my videos, like Spike.com and Revver.com I am left to wonder what service I would actually be paying $99 for? Never mind the $250 Platinum service.

While I think the concept of this site is fine, it seems that I would be spending as much of my time troubleshooting new problems, and checking to see if it even worked. At that point, I may as well just shoot the videos and pay the virtual assistant to upload the links manually. When I consider the VA cost, and TG cost, I think the VA would be cheaper and more reliable.

But again, the idea is great. Post videos on video and podcast sites. Add the text of the videos onto article and blog sites. Post links to the videos, articles and blogs on social networking sites. If the TG service worked as advertised, it would be worth the $99/mo to make life easier. However, with all the hundreds of glitches, it seems to be more work than help.

Marketing

Now we are talking.

http://www.trafficgeyser.com/fk/ - The website's marketing front end comes off as total bullshit, and I would never have signed up with them without a referral. But, i gotta tell ya, it makes perfect sense. After I signed up ($1), many people said it works wonders. I have watched many of the tutorial videos, and I am going to pay the VA (Virtual Assistant) people in China to set things up for me. I am hopeful that this will change everything. They are not cheap. However, best money I ever spent was $300 to http://onesource.com (If I did not spend it, I would have been dying in this economy) so I expect this to be worth it too.

http://www.noblesamurai.com - This company does focused keyword searches. Awesome. Spend some time with these guys, I plan on buying the software. If you read the forums, you will see many satisfied customers.

http://www.otogoldmine.com - This website is also complete bullshit, but I think the concept behind it will work. Basically, these guys let you pick from hundreds of e-books. As the site owner, I select the ones thqat match my customers needs. Then, at the end of the sale, offer these to them. Supposedly 30% actually buy. Even If I choose not to use this particular service, the concept is something I am thinking heavily about.

Marketing Advice

Another amazing place I can send you to is http://helpmybusiness.com/archive/ and he will send you all over the internet with tools, tricks and amazing advice. His focus is on marketing to get customers in, and doing things right to gain repeat customers.

80/20

I am fighting my way through a book called The 80-20 Principle by Richard Koch. Not fighting as in bad, just LONG. This has to be the longest book about business ever! WTF?!? Anyway, I suggest getting the concept of the beginning, then skipping ahead several chapters when he actually starts talking about something useful. The further in you go, the better it gets. Mainly because i find he drifts off topic giving useful info. Too bad be says the words eighty twenty like a bajillion times. But otherwise, a good followup to the 4 hour work week.

Twitter

Could somebody PLEASE tell me what the FUCK is the point to Twitter? I mean, who CARES?!?! I am busy trying to actually limit my time spent on nonsense, and Twitter comes along wasting everyone's time.

Salesmen

This is definately a step in the right direction. Getting other people to sell for me. Funny story: Two cell phone stores I sell to, fired 2 employees. A few days later, I get a phone call from both of them asking to sell my products on the street. Perfect! I have another who is reselling into Jamaica, and another reselling into Haiti. My products are in Suriname too. And of course, I get calls regularly from people who were given my business card or found me on Craigslist.

I have a few thousand that I put into buying regular inventory that sells out weekly (need more money) of the hottest inventory items. I have found that while I am making more sales, giving discounts to salesmen is cutting heavily into profits. The next pricing update is due to be released by me in the next week or two. At that time, my prices will need to go up, in order to compensate for unforeseen losses.

Outsourcing

So.... outsourcing huh?.... Hmmm....

The local Advocate newspaper's front cover a few weeks ago said (Big bold letters) "Sorry, this issue has been outsourced to India". Funny.

So, yeah, let's see. The first company I went with was the only one who took it upon themselves to go to my website and put together a sample for me. I was impressed by the initiative, and hired them. How did it go? Well, 2 weeks later, the deadline had passed, and they had JUST figured out what the hell I was talking about. Was it my inability to speak clearly? Nah. Like I usually explain about China, they understand the words, not the concepts. So, I pulled allthe other possible work from them, and let them finish the task that took me so long to communicate to them. It's now 3 weeks past due, and they did about 110 out of 500 entries.

Second company I hired, I had them do some design work. The title was "2 Posters and a Bag". The agreed price was $2.50/hr. They did 10 hours and really nice, eye catching designs. I paid them the $25.00 and asked for the master files. They said to send them another $25.00 and they would send me the masters. Needless to say, I do not respond well to extortion. I will have another company just redesign it for a fraction of that cost. Besides, it's the principal.

At this point I was frustrated, as I put in about 20 hours of MY time explaining all these projects. The worst was that India was 9.5 hours off from me, so their 9am was my 11:30pm so this created many late nights for me. Point was defeated on making my life easier.

I reposted all my jobs again, this time I broke them apart into different tasks and categories. Then I found my guy. He is Canadian, speaks English as a first language, moved to China, and opened his own Virtual Assistant company. The results were drastically different.

China is 12 hours different from me, so he logs into chat at 8-9pm, perfect for me. He understands my comments (and my jokes). He can follow even the most complex things I throw at him (still testing, but he has been fine so far). While not perfect for all my tasks, he meets most of my needs. His price is $3.00/hr.

There are some tasks I will find others for, like PHP Web coding, but then I will get specialists.

Overall, I found it hit or miss. Even with Feedback, I found I had troubles. The people I liked most were over $9/hr and at that point, I can hire locally. But, my bigger goal is not one-off tasks. I plan on training, then they can do the repetative work daily (like posting on Craigslist) and I can just oversee.

Lawyers

I have 2 lawyers on my ass. One is because I refused to pay back tenants their deposit after they broke the lease within 6 months. The other is because I refused to pay the oil company after making payments, I owed them significantly more than what started with because of bullshit late fees and cancellation fees. They can both blow me.

What I learned is this: After my last small claims case, my tenant was ordered to pay me $35 per week for the next 12 years. So, I am not exactly scared. If I loose any case, I will pay the fuckers in pennies. Simply because they pissed me off. However, I may not, you never know.

The New Business

Wow, so much has changed for the better since I read "The 4-Day Workweek" and "Think and Grow Rich". Really great stuff.

"The 4-Day Workweek" got me to outsource the backend of my company to India saving me an incredible amount of time. Since then, I have been working on all kinds of other projects, like dealing with a UPS mess, and the old tenants who want to sue me (good luck with that). It has also given me much more free time with my wife, who not surprisingly, is taking full advantage of the situation.

The other goal of this book is to focus on 20% of the work that generates 80% of the revenue. So, I made a business decision to actually stop selling to the various local stores because the profit margin is smaller, and I then need to stand around waiting for the owner to turn his attention to me. There is also the constant driving to and from, repairs, blah blah,blah.... When I laid it all out on a table, it was an obvious waste of my time for what little revenue it generated. Instead, I made an offer to me best store customer. More on that another day. I am going to focus on Craigslist and rebuild the website. Both of these topics are falling under the India heading.

It has also freed up my time to focus on the advice of "Think and Grow Rich". The book itself was published in 1937 after the great depression. Don't let that stop you though, quite an amazing work of literature. The aim of this book is saying to visualize your specific goal, and focus by taking advantage of any situation that meets your criteria.

In my case, I said I wanted to have $20,000 in the bank, one year from now. I would achieve it by selling phones. I then remind myself of it several times a day. While it sounds like bullshit, I have already seen an improvement in my business personality. I am calling back more possible customers who leave messages. I am following up with old contacts that have fallen by the side of the road. It has also gotten me to call up older "salesmen" I was working with, and trying to get them back involved.

Basically, since my time isn't being dominated by back-end nonsense anymore, I am looking into more sales avenues, that involve the least amount of work for me. For example, I had met a guy who is a "street hussler" about 2 weeks ago. Since then, he sold 2 phones, and has 2 more pending. I met him tonight and gave him one of the phones. Same night, I met another guy, same situation. He called me tonight about 2 possible sales. These types of situations are great, because they make money, I make money, and I don't even need to do anything but hand off inventory to people I already know. This is a much better situation than the one that involves meeting strange people in random parking lots. Let them do that, I'll be watching TV or something.

I have seen the light

Are you ready?

Ready the book: The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris

The is one of the best I have come across in a very long time. I was told about it 2 years ago, but I thought it was just another self-help book. Boy, was I wrong. It was more in the lines of Life Changing. Seriously.

Based on his advise, I have now outsourced my entire company to India. Seriously. My old assistant emailed me about some nonsense, and I replied: "I have outsourced your old job to India for $2.50 per hour. Have a nice day."

Can you image? It was SO easy. Just go to http://elance.com and sign up. I did that before bed. the next morning, I had 10 offers, the average price was a whopping $2.50 per hour. Crazy.

After some interviewing, I chose a company that went above and beyond the competition. I gave them 10 tasks, with 10 different skill sets, and they assembled a team just for me. this ranges from design, to bookkeeping.

Oh yeah, I should email that worthless bookkeeper and let her know I have outsourced her job too.

I spend about 7-8 hours assembling everything I could possibly think of for them. I emailed it, and now I just sit back, and wait for the work to be completed. I will have an updated website, updated inventory, sales added to PeachTree. And all at $2.50/hr. It does not get any better than that.

Sure, it will cost several hundred to get up and running the way I want it, but then it will be all down hill. The best part? I wont have to do a damn thing.

The basic point of the book, 4-hour workweek is to take yourself completely out of the equation. Once I get them to understand where I get my inventory list from, and they know that they need to check on this bi-weekly, then i will have eliminated a huge amount of time I waste week after week. And at only.... $2.50 an hour.

I can have my life back. Yeah!

Two posts in 2 days?

Two posts in 2 days. The hell is wrong with me? Like I said, I need break time. I have been down here in my office for the past 5 hours now and I am feeling a little burnt.

Today, I went to the bookstore and bought a book about getting government grants. Not quite sure where that topic will lead me, but it had other stuff in it that helped point out things to me. Like, what to say to investors, how to say it. It explained how to put together a proposal for an investor and stuff like that. Most of it I am sure I know, but I would still like to have it spoon feed to me.

One problem I have in life is that I do not have a mentor. 100% of the business decisions I make are based on my own experiences. Since I have a long history of advertising, and watching others succeed and fail, I feel confident in my choices, but it would still be nice to have a guide.

This is a lead-in to a plug for a TV show that you should definitely watch. I mean, If you are reading a blog about building your own business from scratch, which you are, then yeah, you should watch it. It's called "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch" and it really is amazing stuff I would never have expected on "free" TV. If anyone knows where I can find all the past episodes, I would love to hear about it. Torrents didn't come back with anything. You can checkout a few episodes here: http://www.fancast.com/tv/The-Big-Idea-with-Donny-Deutsch/97338/full-episodes

There is an Audio book of his that came out that is 50% off at Barnes and Noble so it's only like $9.00. Less if you have a Membership. I will buy it tomorrow.

When I work these long hours, there are 2 things that get me through them. Alcohol and music.

Yeah, by definition, I am an alcoholic. But, I do it to clear my mind. It helps me focus on the task at hand. It's kind of like Ritalin or something. For me anyway. I have this mixture I created for myself. It's mostly powdered ice tea, but I throw in the rest of the ingredients of a Long Island Iced Tea. So, it's got Vodka, Gin, Rum, Tequila, etc.... The mixture is designed to get me drunk, but not cost a fortune, since it is mostly flavored water. The thing is, for me, it puts my physically into a happy place, but my mind has never been affected by alcohol. So I think as clearly as ever, if not a bit more creative. So, in case your wondering, it's a long Saturday night, so yeah, I'm pretty plastered right now. Since I drink alone daily, I am categorized as a drunk. However, Since my thoughts are fairly coherent, anyone with a problem can kiss my ass. My liver, however, is another story.

So, the music. Ok, I have unintentionally collected 27 songs that are my favorites that play when I want some music while I work. The unintentional part is that they are mostly inspirational music. As I type this, it sounds silly, but much of the music gives me confidence in what I am doing, when I am the only one spending hours, days, weeks and months on this stuff.

They seem to start off pretty dark with songs like:
"Nine Inch Nails - Hurt" "I hurt myself today, To see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, The only thing that's real"
Then "Smashing Pumpkins - Galapagos" "Too late to turn back now, I'm running out of time and I am changing, changing"

This then drifts into songs like:
"Bob Segar - Like a Rock" "My hands were steady, My eyes were clear and bright,
My walk had purpose, My steps were quick and light, And I held firmly to what I felt was right, like a rock"
and "Battlestar Galactica Theme" Which is a Hindu prayer for guidance. "May Thou guide our intellect in the right direction."
and "David Gilmour - Coming Back to Life" "I knew the moment had arrived, For killing the past and coming back to life"

And then the songs end with:
Guns N' Roses - Breakdown" "Funny how everything was roses, When we held on to the guns"
and then the climax with "Pink Floyd - Fearless" "You say the hill's too steep to climb, You say you'd like to see me try, You pick the place and I'll choose the time, And I'll climb The hill in my own way"

Gawd, that all sounded so cheesy. But, I guess the point is there, that I do what it takes to motivate myself night after night, and get through this garbage. And yes, it's hard. Last year at this time, I was the only person who saw my vision. And now? Now my whole family believes I can do it. I mean, shit, I've been selling phones for the past year, and making money. I have been building a very strong business. I have many regular customers. And I can fill out those grants (and other loans) to say: "I have been in business for more than a year. Here is a list of my contacts for customers, suppliers, and other investors."

At this point, I have drifted past the point of "Kinda drunk", and right into the "we need to go to bed now" drunk. But, are these just ramblings? Naw, I've been wanting to mention these things for quite some time. I hope they give you some direction in your "quiet time", and help you through those hours of wondering if it is all worth it. Is it? Oh, I don't know. I guess it boils down to how you handle it. To me, my son comes first (even though it gets a little forced on me), and then my business, then my wife.

How does she feel about being in last place? Well, she gets every Friday night. No matter what, I do not work on Friday nights, I spend them exclusively with her. Overall, she understands the nature of what I do. When a customer calls, she knows that if I don't drop what I am doing, they will likely not call back later, and I will loose the sale. But, that is a whole other topic. If they take the time to call me at 5pm, why won't they call back at 6pm? Who the hell knows. Stupid customers.

Update

I have lots going on, and no time to blog. But, I took the 20 minutes to give you an update. Little distraction for me, from all the busy work.

Someone asked what happened with my Amazon.com account. Well, they shut down both my accounts and held the money for 3 months. When I got my money back, i said good riddance. I have since considered going back (briefly) because the money was so good. But, since I now deal with cell phones, that is some serious inventory and money i would be dealing with. Even if I had the money, and was willing to take the completely pointless risk, there are always the ass-sucking degenerates who would give me a 1 star because the phone sucked. Like that's is my fault? Crap like that would get me kicked off again in like 5 minutes.

Anyway, February and March were killer for business. I was like, "wow, this is what a real business is supposed to be like in a good economy." But, like all good things, the tax checks ran out, and so did my sales. I think i sold like 6 phones for April, which totally blows.

But, good things came out of that rush of sales. One was that I hired an assistant, who lasted all of 3 weeks. At first I was upset, but them this past month I would have had to fire him anyway without any money coming in to pay for him.

I also hired a bookkeeper who totally sucked. I'm not sure what her problem was, really, but after she put 25 hours into building the company in peachtree, she realized she did it wrong, and wanted more money. I told her she should have picked up the phone and asked, I wasnt paying her more, so she quit and deleted the database. I didn't pay her, so whatever. what I did do, was hire another bookkeeper to teach me a bit about peachtree, and I figured I could just build it myself. It's not that hard to learn, took about 2.5 hours, and I paid him $50 for his time.

In case your wondering why peachtree instead of Quickbooks, the main reason is that Quickbooks does not track serial numbers. I wanted to track sales from original purhcase, through repairs. In total, it means keeping track of a single items for over 1 month if needed.

Next week I am going to be displaying my company at a local bank. I signed upo for it a few months ago and now it's finally here. Basically, it is a bank that is located in the major grocery store. So, for 2 weeks, everyone walking by will see my phone business. If anyone really cares, I will also have business cards for my computer repair business, and menu's for my wifes catering business.

To draw more attention, I thought I would take a small financial hit, and give away a Blackberry phone for peoples email addresses. I wanted to start emailing specials to people, and keep in their mind for when they need a new phone. Since I paid about $80 for the phone, I think a trade of hundreds of email addresses for local people will all need a phone sooner or later, is worth it. I wasnt sure at first, but I think it is. It's all about the advertising. Next to the supermarket, I used to have a computer repair location, and I had machines to fix all the time (rent sucked though). So, I know business can be good if I can just get my name out there. If this works, I will reach out to all the different branches in the area (they have dozens of banks around here) and have them diaplay my business. Why not right? It's all free advertising. Well, except that $80 phone... but that is just a 'try it, and see what it does' kind of idea.

Oh wait, I still HAVE a blog?

Oh, Crap,I'm sorry. I didn't think anyone really gave a shit about what was going on in my life or my business. Ok, Ok, I'll give a recap on how things turned out.

October:
I won my court case against the tenants from the previous year for $5000. The court ruled it as a no-contest and just gave me what I wanted.

The current Tenants broke the lease and moved out on the 31st. At the time, I told them no hard feelings, and I would forward on their security in 30 days.

November:
Since the house was still messed up from the first tenants, and now more (medium) damage from the last tenants, I had decided to keep the place vacant for the month, and remodel the place once again. I fixed all the things that were driving me nuts.

My phone business was suffering because I spent all my time at the house fixing it back up. By the end of the month, my sales had plummeted because I could not spend any time at it.

The first tenant and I settled for $2000 cash to drop the whole thing and move on. We parted peacefully, and apologized for really messing up each others year with this nonsense.

I opened up a Home Depot Credit Card to try and bury some of this remodeling cost.

By the end of the month, the cost was about $1500-$2000 in materials to fix it back up to it's original glory, and then some.

I found a tenant who signed a lease and wrote a deposit check to move in on December 1st. As it turned out, the check bounced. Needless to say, I did not let them in.

Because of tight money, I did not pay the insurance payment.

I used the $2000 from the lawsuit to pay for some repairs, and the rest went to pay for the month's mortgage.

December:
The house stayed vacant and I could not find anyone to rent the place no matter what I tried. The insurance company dropped me since I did not pay them. Later in the month I signed with another insurance company.

I stabilized my phone business, and was ready for my board game sales to skyrocket with the holiday season. That never happened. Lots of traffic, but sales were terrible.

I had another couple who signed a lease for January 1st. A little digging revealed that they were evicted earlier in the year and did not pay the landlord. Once again, I canceled the lease.

I opened a Credit Card with a $1000 limit, and used the money to buy inventory, and float credit card purchases for customers, since deposits took 3-4 business days.

I did not have enough money to pay the mortgage. This started my credit spiral into oblivion.

January:
On January 18th, I found a tenant, and signed a lease.

On January 20th, some nosey person from Craigslist went to my property, looked in the window, and saw that my basement was flooded. They called the fire department, who broke in, shut everything off, cleaned it out and left a note. A few days later, I went to get the last of my stuff out of house, and discovered that I had a flooded basement earlier in the week.

I decided to make an insurance claim, and quite surprisingly, they accepted it, and paid for everything. The downside was that quite a lot of work that was just completed, now needed to be redone. Drywall, Tile, doors, sink, tub... all of it was ripped out because of the moisture. My real motivation for doing this was because earlier in the year I had another flood from the same location (different pipe) that had left much mildew growing since I ignored it the first time.

Still did not pay mortgage, but had started a workout with them. Credit continued to tank.

February:
To make this quick, I submitted a quote for $7500 and had the work done for $3000. So, when it all ended, I walked away with over $5,000.00 cash. I used this money to pay off most of the companies begging me for money all year long. I also invested a bit into my phone business on office supplies, new computer equipment, etc. Still had some left over as a financial cushion.

Tenants are settled and happy. They pay rent early.

My Phone business went through the roof. I guess income taxes started coming in, because I went from 10-20 phones in January to over 100 in February. I became completely overwhelmed and my under-structure of the business/office/tracking completely fell apart. I was lost under a sea of money in/out/returns/repairs. I realized that if I wanted to succeed, I needed to rebuild my inventory tracking and billing procedures from the ground up. This is what it was like to run a real business.

The bank gave me a really shitty workout that only fixed their best interest, and did nothing to fix my real problems. I sat on the paperwork for the next month trying to figure things out.

March:
I hired a bookkeeper who is building my company inside of PeachTree. The bottom line reason for PeachTree as opposed to Quickbooks was because of inventory tracking. I wanted to track the serial numbers on the phones to ensure that any returns were really my phones. As I have started selling more and more brand name phones, it would otherwise be easy to have me fix someone elses broken stuff. The bookkeeper will likely cost several hundred dollars just to get this up and running, but it will be a benefit in the long run. As I said, the way I was doing business before was collapsing under it's own weight.

I hired an assistant. My wife wants to know where I am getting money to pay for him. I explained that as long as I continue to give him money generating work, he will make his own salery. As an example, I have been having him build CraigsList ads for the items I have in stock. Once they are built, they can just be relisted every few days and a regular customer generator. It has worked out as I expected, if not better.

Basically, if I sell a phone from CraigsList, that is a local customer. They are then showing it around to friends. My referrals in the past 30 days has started snowballing and I am getting more cold calling with no extra effort.

The assistant actually offered to take less pay, if I teach him how I am running my online business. He has tried to get his own stuff off the ground, but was not successful. So, I get cheap help.

I also found another go-getter who is out trying to make sales. He knows my price, so he can mark it up whatever he wants, and make the sale. Once again, someone else does the work, and I collect the money. I like this idea.

The insurance company dropped me (No big surprise). The new company cost $50 more per month, but since I walked away with $5000, I think I made out quite well.

I signed the workout and sent it in. Basically they are taking out a 2nd loan for $40/mo to payback the missed payments. This means I need to deal with the house taxes separately. Oh, did I mention I did not pay taxes all year long and now they put a lien on it? Yeah, I need to have the bank open an escrow account to pay that off. So, that means the monthly cost is going to skyrocket. with these 2 extra payments.

The tenants want to buy the house, so I am going work out something from that angle. I will be quite happy to just be done with that money pit, and buy something else at a better deal. It cost me way too much per month to keep that property. I think it has paid me back quite nicely over the years, despite the headaches.

Last Tenants

My last tenants were only in there for six months before they wanted to leave. Most likely cause is that the rest cost too much for them. So, instead of simply asking to break it, they went right for the Fire Marshall and Building Inspector. What bullshit.

Now that they are out, I am doing many of the much needed repairs before putting new tenants in there. Sure, it is costing me more than $100 per day in lost income, but the property desperately needs some TLC. Additionally, after the last 2 tenants sucked, I want to try any find someone worth while this time.

My Day in Court

7 months ago, tenants of mine moved out, leaving behind approximately $12,000 worth of damage. I easily kept the $3,500 security. Soon, I realized it was not enough.

6 months ago I filed a small claims for $5,000 in damages to my property.

Last week I had my day at the court house.

This week I received a judgment for the full $5,000 in damages.

The down side is that the court order is for $35 per week for the next 12 years. I sounds silly, but it is $170 per month. Likely, she won't even bother to pay it, so then I can go after the full amount.

If you read back to my older posts, you will see that we also won a court case against an employer for wrongful dismissal. I also got eBay to leave me alone when they tried to file a collection on me.

Yahoo's Pay Per Click

I got this in my email today:

From November 3, 2008, until December 31, 2008, Yahoo! will be making a seasonal rate adjustment by increasing the cost per click (CPC) by 25% in all categories.

Hey Yahoo, take your shitty Pay-Per-Click scam and shove it up your seasonal ass.

If there are any readers thinking about doing pay-per-click, consider this: Last Christmas, I made approximately $25 profit for every $300 I spent. Your time is better spent setting up the free Google-Base. Not as much traffic, but again, it's free. So is http://shopmania.com... for what it's worth. Also, drive ebay traffic to your website. When they ask you a question in email, be sure to respond off-system with all your website information... and tell them it's cheaper too.

Cell Phone Sales

My business has really taken of. I keep getting many one-off sales, and then I get the 5+ phone orders. I always look at the bills and wonder how in the world I can pay them, but then I get a phone call out o the blue ordering 8 phones. It's pretty cool. I made a generic craigslist ad for a phone and I have been getting many emails about it. Today, someone called me on it, I met him and sold him a phone in a gas station parking lot. he then informs me he likes the phone so much, he wants to get them for his salesmen! Not sure how it will turn out, but so far all my big orders have followed though.

I have hired a data entry person, and a designer for various projects that have come my way. Last year, i never would have guessed I have more work, than I have time. I am really happy about what I have accomplished in this past year. All my businesses are doing well for themselves. Each one is enough to keep me busy. All Together, I need to hire help. Crazy.