Creative Compulsion

So I decided to stop fighting my self-diagnosed adult ADHD. No, I don’t say that mockingly, I’m actually dead serious. My daughter concurs with my diagnosis. I just have to being doing 10 million things at once and can’t concentrate on anything for very long. I flit from one project to another (well, except my “real” job on eBay/my sites) and stop and start all kinds of things. Mix that with a healthy dose of OCD… whew, I tire myself out.

But, I digress…

I’ve been making web templates for around 10 years now. I used to design blog templates regularly for a site called Blogfrocks.com (don’t bother visiting, it’s now defunct). I started selling auction templates on eBay about a year and a half ago and also here on my site. I got too busy with other things and kinda let it fall by the wayside (sorta like my jewelry which I create regularly but only sell when the mood strikes).

Anyhoo… the name of my blog, Creative Compulsion, pretty much says it all. When you’re an artist, any kind of artist, you have this kind of inner drive or compulsion that just doesn’t let go. This week I suddenly found myself desperately wanting to draw. That led to re-opening some of my archived templates. That led to saying “Hey, why not sell a few”. That led to a new category in my main eBay store.

I doubt I’ll offer them for sale here on CC so if you’re interested in seeing/purchasing, send me an email to sarah [at] creativecompulsion.com and I’ll be happy to provide you with a link to my store. AND… I’ll also give a 10% discount off BIN/Store Inventory Templates if you mention my blog when you purchase

I’m on a roll lately setting up new shops and finally got around to something I’ve been thinking about for over a year now. I opened an Etsy shop! And the name… big surprise here… Creative Compulsion.

So far, I only have two items listed:

I have several things to list but need to get around to taking pictures. In the meantime, please visit and heart me as I will be trying to add more daily!

Visit Creative Compulsion on Etsy

I haven’t posted much because I’ve been working on getting a new site going. It’s finally live!!

I’ve had great luck with the items I currently have, mostly collectibles and some home decor items. What I’ve found is that they tend to be quite seasonal in nature. For the last few months I’ve been toying with the idea of adding in a completely different line that would be more stable and consistent, more of a commodity-type. I’ve experimented with body jewelry and while I’ve sold almost all of the inventory I purchased, the mark-ups are (obviously) so thin you really have to sell a lot to make it worth the time. In the past several months, I began introducing pet supplies to my eBay store, Cutting Edge Gifts. I began selling things from store inventory immediately without even running auctions so, after lots of thought and more research, have decided to make that a permanent part of my offerings.

Visit my new “labor of love” at KT Pet Supply. Named after my beloved Golden Retriever, Katie, my childhood best friend

Just when you thought I was going to let you get bored this week… time to switch again!

Good header for this week. ‘Nuff said.

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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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

The holiday season that is! In the last month and a half, I have wanted to scream or pull my hair out practically every day. This is my second Christmas season selling online full time and I felt so overwhelmed at times. But like with everything, I learned a lot about what worked, what didn’t and what I can improve on. My sales were great - better than I had projected, and that’s a huge plus!!

I learned so much in the past year. Not just about business, but about myself. I’m stronger than I thought I was. Sure, I get cranky and sometimes the customers (the ones that can never be pleased) get me down a bit. Overall, though, I’m a pretty tough cookie these days. Hopefully always fair, but I won’t be taken advantage of. I had my first foray into the world of small auction sites (namely Wagglepop - yuck!). I found that for my buck, the better return is from eBay even with the higher fees. Of course, my websites still come first and are what I enjoy the most - they’re like children to me, lol.

My New Year’s resolution for this year was to quit smoking New Year’s Day. I beat my goal! Tomorrow will be 2 weeks (ok, except for a partial cheat on New Year’s Eve - not good to drink when you’re trying to quit apparently!). I started taking Chantix the day before Thanksgiving. I’m not sure exactly how it works, I only know that it does. I’ve tried everything and nothing seemed to help me quit. This time, I don’t even really want to smoke and when I did, I just didn’t enjoy it at all. Take it from a hard-core, I love my smokes, 2 pack a day smoker - if you want to quit, you gotta try this medicine!

I think the most important thing I’m walking away from 2006 with is a better sense of who I am - and who I’m not. I’m absolutely good enough exactly the way I am. Not perfect, don’t want to be - but comfortable in my skin and proud of who I am these days. I don’t need to impress anyone. If you don’t like something about me, that’s your problem, not mine. I’ve spent almost 35 years trying to impress people and worrying about what others thought. I can honestly say, I really don’t care anymore. I like me.

Back to work but before I do - Happy New Years all!!

Ok, after a lot of thought I’ve decided to change the way Creative Compulsion is set up. I’ve always enjoyed creating linkware and templates and will continue to create more as time allows. However, I currently have an eBay store, Wagglepop store and 3 websites, soon to be 4! I simply can’t devote the time I used to to making linkware anymore. I’m also finding it increasingly difficult to get updates done on this site because I’m always so busy on the other sites.

Since I love CC and refuse to give it up, lol, I’ve decided that I will no longer offer templates - linkware or purchaseware - on this site. Instead, I will be posting updates here whenever I list new templates at my Wagglepop shop.

Wagglepop is free for buyers to use. Registration is easy and no credit card or financial information is required to sign up. I hope you will continue to visit here for updates and at my new home at WP!

For those of you who have enjoyed my linkware over the last 8 years, I thank you so much for the kind emails and encouraging words I have had from so many of you. As time allows, I plan to still offers freebies here and maybe the occasional set. Thanks again!!!

I’ve spent the last few days installing Wordpress because it just seemed like it would be easier to manage things!! Bear with me as I get things reset (geesh… I’ve been saying that alot lately!!)