Creative Compulsion

This blog started years ago as my personal digital diary. Wasn’t always pretty, sometimes was entertaining but was always MY place to say what I thought, when and how I wanted. I got away from that for a time. I really got irritated one day to find my blog listed among many others on a site. The site was a ’study’ of sorts and inferred that personal blogs were arrogant because who really cared but the writer? I never thought of it as arrogant, but it stopped me from writing for a long time. Recently, I’ve asked myself why I write. Even though my day to day life involves auctions, my websites and online businesses, I am still ME. I’m not just an eBay ID or a domain name.

The domain itself, creativecompulsion.com, is highly personal. To those who experience it, no explanation is needed. Do a search on Google for the term and you’ll find it referenced over and over again. For those not blessed (or cursed) with it, it’s exactly as the name implies. An inner drive to create. It could be anything: drawings, jewelry, poetry, photographs, bouquets. Anything, everything - the inner compulsiveness doesn’t release you until you create. For me, its many of those things. I create jewelry and website templates. I love to draw and paint. Mainly, I write.

Why a blog? That part was simple to answer after I gave it some thought. The human connection. The blog makes my journal no less valuable, but adds an element that my private writing will never have: the ability to connect with others. As humans, we are naturally relational creatures. We won’t admit it but we stare at the train wrecks, we quietly cheer on the underdog, we love to tell secrets and gossip? We thrive on it. A personal blog provides that in a private, yet very public, way. I can’t begin to express the encouragement, friendship, and sense of kinship I’ve felt through the emails and comments my readers have sent as this piece of ‘net real estate has evolved over the years.

So is that arrogant? I think not. And personally speaking, I think I’ll be a bit more personal from now on.

I have been hosting with Clook.us for about a year now and quite honestly love them! I’ve never seen customer support like they have - 2-5 minute response time and always helpful. Recently, though, I made the (difficult) decision to switch hosts. It’s purely a bandwidth thing. On one of my eBay ids I sell digital products, mainly templates that are in huge zip files. The sales on that id are picking up a lot this month (a good thing) but my bandwidth limit on my host is 10 gig and I’ve already used 25 gig this month (not such a good thing). Soooo, I started shopping. Needed more space and a host that would let me have multiple domains as I have 4 now and a 5th to be added soon with a 6th following hopefully not too far behind. (I know, I’m becoming a domain whore).

After looking over lots of packages and browsing several different forums, I decided to go with Go Daddy. It seemed pretty logical - my domains are registered there and my SSL certificates were purchased there. I heard that CS isn’t the greatest, but I typically don’t need help outside of installing certificates and other basic things. I did read on one forum (from several people) that uptime was good and speed was ok. So, I switched one domain. Just to see. I went with their Deluxe plan which gives you 100GB of storage and 1000GB of bandwidth - more than enough for what I need. Everything went smooth and even though I’m used to CPanel, I found my way around the hosting interface easily.

Everything went so well I decided to transfer a second domain/site over. This one has an SSL certificate. Everything went smooth - site looks fine. Only thing left to do - transfer the SSL certificate. Now, I had emailed support prior to signing up for hosting to ask what the transfer process entailed. They told me once my hosting was set up, I could automatically transfer the certificate by just clicking the Transfer button under my certificate options. Even I could handle this right? Uh, not so much.

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How generous! eBay has graciously offered a 50% off sale. Ok, so it’s auctions only.

It works for me, I normally only run fixed price but in the last few weeks I’ve been experimenting with some auctions and having some decent luck. I’ve found that you have to bear in mind that the environment on eBay is different these days. Auctions (most anyway) don’t result in the bidding wars and high returns of the past. With the body jewelry, I start the auction at my store price with no BIN. Sounds stupid, huh? It’s actually worked quite well. One of my belly rings that I normally sell for $9.99 just sold for a little over $21.00 by running an auction that way. At least I am sure to get what I want for them and most times a bit more.

The collectibles are a bit different. I normally run those auctions as loss leaders anyway, so I’m not so much looking at the dollar amount it closes for, but rather looking for additional business from the winner with that sale and/or in the future. Most sellers I know do this and it’s certainly not a new theory. It does work and that’s why people do it.

However you run your auctions — good luck and happy eBaying! But hurry… the 50% off sale is good for today only!

If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you already know I get incredibly bored very quickly. A little ADHD there maybe, but for you it means never staring at the same Wordpress theme for too long!

If you have some time, be sure to visit alexking.org to look at lots of other great themes. I downloaded 5 or 6 this time around, should keep me occupied for awhile

I think a lot of people have been waiting for something like this for a long time. eBay’s new Markdown Manager will allow store owners to hold virtual sales on their items. I haven’t delved too far into it, but it appears you can mark down a single item, sub-category, whole category or even your entire store. But, as we’ve come to expect, the name GlitchBay has been earned yet again.

From Ina Steiner’s Auctionbytes today:

Sellers welcomed eBay’s new Markdown Manager feature that allows them to put items on sale, but technical glitches are putting a damper on their enthusiasm. eBay notified developers of the problems, though it did not put an announcement on the Systems Announcement Board.

There are a number of ongoing issues with the “Markdown Manager” feature on the eBay.com site. Sales created through the API (which affects listings submitted via seller tools) are not becoming active at the scheduled time. Sellers also reported the opposite problem. A thread on the eBay Stores board relates sellers who put items for sale for a limited time, only to have the sale never end. “I had a one-day fashion jewelry sale on February 1st which never ended,” wrote one seller.

Nice try eBay. I attempted to use it to put a category on sale for the month of February. No go. No sale. Guess I better watch it carefully or my whole store may be on sale for the remainder of the year. Honestly, I think this will be a very useful tool for sellers once they get it working correctly. If you haven’t used Markdown Manager yet, you can get to it by viewing your Selling Manager main page and clicking the link under Manage My Store. Alternatively, go to Manage My Subscriptions -> Manage My Store -> Item Promotion -> Markdown Manager. Have fun!

It’s not a widget, it’s not wikipedia, it’s Widgipedia! The new site by Vendio is a place where developers can upload and share widgets and webmasters and users can try out the latest.

From ecommwire.com this morning…

“Vendio™ Services, Inc. today announced the official launch of Widgipedia.com, a new website devoted to accelerating the development and distribution of Web and desktop “widgets” across a growing number of widget development platforms.

Widgets have exploded over the last several years as the Web 2.0 ecosystem has enabled developers to use open interfaces to extend website functionality to the desktop and to embed features of one website into another. A YouTube™ video seen on a site other than YouTube.com is a widget. Widgets also enable you to get the local weather forecast on your computer without going to a web page.”

Read full story here

Ever since I installed the Filmloop script on this site, I’ve been fascinated by all the different widgets you can install on your site. Realizing I really could get carried away I’ve had to restrain myself, but there are tons of useful applications out there that will make your life as a webmaster easier and your visitor’s life as a browser more interesting. A quick browse through the new Widgipedia site revealed games and fun utilities as well as helpful widgets such as an order form creator and question and answer form. Very useful stuff here!

As an example, here’s a widget that is useful for eBay bargain hunters, Misspellr. This utility will help you cash in on the spelling mistakes of others. Find auctions that you otherwise may have missed due to errors! It also works on Craigslist, ebid.net and Yahoo! Auctions. Click on the screenshot for more information and to download: