The Whine Seller

Here is what I’ve been reading from December 23rd through December 30th.

• Novelists Inc, or Ninc, Proposes Fee On Used Book Sales; Bad For Authors, Bad For U.S. Economy | Matthew Wayne Selznick - Even as a writer I have to oppose this one! (December 30th)
• Micro Persuasion: Re-Tweets Comprise Two Percent of All Twitter Volume - (December 30th)
• Twitter as a Terrorist's Tool? - Washington Post Investigations - (December 30th)
• Twitter / Tips, News & Status: ☼ WHO'S HERE? Twitter stat … - My brother told me that he pictures Twitter as a bunch of geeky middle aged men and me. Who knew he was right? (December 30th)
• Project Wonderful Talk - Unofficial Project Wonderful Bidding Engine - Want to make the most of Project Wonderful? Download this free bidding assistant to Auto-Bid on inexpensive ads whenever they are made available. (December 23rd)

Did I miss a good news item this week? If so, submit it below.

When I was in college, I was selling a huge batch of Star Trek figures for a Trading Assistant client before Christmas. One of my good friends was a casual eBay buyer but was fascinated by the selling aspect of it and used to watch my auctions all the time. (Interesting fact: Said friend was the roommate for 4 years of my now husband.)

He imed me and asked if he could bid on some of my items. I told him, of course, and he ended up winning one of the figures (I sadly don’t remember which one). Mind you, it took him like 3 weeks to pay me which is even more pathetic since I saw him every day, especially since when he did finally pay it was via PayPal which I consider to be a party foul since he made me pay fees. I naturally ribbed him about this.

After shouting across the quad at him, “Don’t make me file a non-paying bidder report on you! Don’t think I won’t do it!” he finally paid me that day and I walked over to his dorm and handed him his item (fastest and easiest shipping ever).

So the next day I am looking at my feedback and my buddy had left me feedback and it was a positive and all it said was, “Enjoy the eggnog!” I’m like, what kind of feedback is that? Then, on a whim, I walk over to the fridge in my apartment and there is a carton of eggnog with a post-it note on it that says “for Hillary.” I consider this a more than fair trade for making me wait and pay PayPal fees.

Sadly, that feedback is so buried back in my feedback list I couldn’t even find it to get the exact wording or date but it will stick forever in my mind as my favorite feedback ever.

So consider this a little wish from me that you and yours have an excellent holiday, whichever holiday you celebrate, and a wonderful, and successful, New Year!

Here is what I’ve been reading from December 18th through December 21st.

• 7 Things to Do with your Blog when you take a Vacation - This is a really helpful (and timely) article! (December 21st)
• MySpace v. Facebook Advertising Showdown. Which Platform Is Better? - (December 21st)
• The Daily Follow — Because who you read is as important as who you know - This is a cool blog. Each day they feature someone that you should be following on Twitter, kind of like a personality profile. (December 18th)

Did I miss a good news item this week? If so, submit it below.

So I was looking at sites linking to this website and I discovered this eBay listing. I am mystified. That listing seems to have been set up only to drive traffic to my post about how to get the eBay Live Cashback discount as well as a few other random links. The poster says that he/she is trying to increase his/her traffic but I am unclear how advertising my blog will help this person with that.

I appreciate the extra traffic, I suppose, since there are decent number of hits on that listing but I am afraid that most people are going to think that I created this post which I most definitely did not. I am pretty convinced that its against eBay policies as well as she isn’t actually selling anything and has external links and I am also a little wary of being associated with a listing in violation of policies. Especially against my will and in such a very random way. On the other hand, I suppose there is no real harm to it.

What mystifies me the most, though, is what does the seller get out of it? I mean, he/she paid 35 cents to basically drive traffic to some other random sites.

I guess I just don’t get it. Can someone explain this one to me?