From the comments on Failbook:

Yup, that pretty much sums it all up.

This post is overdue. My apologies.

Firstly…

Kabbage.com, which provides online sellers with financing and capital is not only a really great company for small business owners, they are also a great resource for e-commerce news both on their blog and Twitter. I follow them on Twitter (@KabbageInc) and was pleasantly surprised to see The Whine Seller featured in a post called 10 eCommerce Blogs to Read Before Sundown.

What they wrote:

Kabbage is a startup and a small business, and we know that with any small business, its way too easy to get so caught up in the day to day running of the business and forget to keep up with that all important industry news. We keep up with eCommerce news just like you do, but if we tried to read every eCommerce news article, tip or trick that graced the internet on any given day (and sometimes it feels like we do!) the we wouldn’t have time to make Kabbage advances. So, we’ve compiled ten of the blogs that we read every day before the sun goes down.

The Whine Seller:

The Whine Seller, written by PowerSeller and author, Hillary DePiano, covers a large range of information related to buying and selling on eBay and Amazon. The Whine Seller blogs with a lighthearted attitude, but her blogs are full of crucial info not to be missed!

Adding to the compliment, there are some really big deal blogs on that list (including ColderICE, eBay Ink and Channel Adviser amongst others) so to be named in that company is very humbling. What makes it even more amazing, though, is of those 10 fantastic blog… they listed this blog FIRST! I am, frankly speechless. I know that the list isn’t in any order to denote ranking but the fact that they thought of us first is compliment enough.

I’m always amazed when anyone recommends this blog. I mean, I do work very hard on it but some of the time it feel like I’m just goofing around or ranting so the fact that I’m still coming off as useful info makes me feel like all the work is worth it.

Secondly…

I’ve got a guest article coming up over with Suzanne Wells at eBay Selling Coach which should be up any day now about tips for selling collectibles.

Thirdly…

Grammy’s Janet Place was kind enough to do a feature on her giveaways section of her blog highlighting my Twitter contest. You can see that post here.

Lastly…

I totally missed this post which was from May and I only just saw it today when I was trying to find another link otherwise I would have posted about it sooner. Several weeks *before* I spoke about eBay accounting helper Outright on either the blog or Twitter, they featured me in a post called eBay Selling:

The Top Blogs in the Business

There are literally thousands of blogs dedicated to selling on eBay.
EBay’s own informational blog is a
great place to go for news and updates on policies and changes. AuctionBytes, The Brews News, and The Whine Seller are just three of
the great blogs that can help you interpret and vent about customer
relation issues and what eBay’s ongoing changes to policy may mean to
sellers. Another great blog for more general ecommerce news is ColderICE.

EBay offers seller’s forums
in the form of chat rooms, discussion boards, and neighborhoods on its
site, which are another great way to connect with other sellers.

I also retroactively feel guilty for this but what can you do.

Holy cow! They mentioned little ole me in the same breath as
AuctionBytes! I am most definitely not worthy. The comments on
AuctionBytes are usually the world’s scariest pitchfork wielding angry
mob but I have been reading that site before any other e-commerce site
Ina and her team there do a fantastic job over there and to mention me
along side of them is a huge, massive compliment.

-

This post was just a little recap fest, paying back some sites that were kind enough to link to me recently that I forgot to highlight at the time because I am busy? senile? (pick one). But at the risk of coming off as a total sap? dork? (I’m going to make you pick again) there are days when I’m working my butt off on this blog and sitting here going… why? But I have such a loyal base of readers who comment and retweet all the time and then things like this happen unsolicited and, well, it humbles me is all. I love writing for you all and I love knowing that you love it, it makes it all worthwhile. I really appreciate your support for this silly little blog that just started out as a way for me to talk about e-commerce in a really angry way.

You guys are great!

I have a quick little story for you. For the last few months, I have been aggressively nagged by two different companies about a domain name similar to mine. This website is TheWhineSeller.com but they wanted me to know that WhineSeller.com was going to be available soon.

Now, at first, I thought it might be nice to have the similar domain as there was another blog living on WhineSeller.com back when I started this blog so it wasn’t an option. It was shorter. It was my brand name.

But on the flip side, all it would really be is a redirect, I wasn’t about to change every single link on the site to the other domain and mess up all the back links and whatnot. From an English language standpoint, I like The Whine Seller better for a variety of reasons I’m not sure I can explain. So it was one of those things where, if someone wanted to give me the domain, I’d take it, but I sure wasn’t getting into a bidding war over it.

So, out of curiosity, I took a look at their emails. They told me it was a domain with a lot of interest that would sell for a lot. Now, I suspected that was BS but there was a blog living there before and I have no idea how popular that was so maybe it was true, what do I know.

I’m taking out the links and company names but here is a sample of the first email I got:

Priority Domain Availability Notice for whineseller.com:

In the next few days, whineseller.com will be listed for sale. Since you have a similar domain name, I thought you might be interested in acquiring whineseller.com.

You can confirm your interest in the domain whineseller.com by filling out the form here: [removed]

After I receive a confirmation that you are interested in the domain whineseller.com, I will be in touch with you promptly to make arrangements.

I look forward to hearing back from you.
[contact info removed]

I got variations on this email for since early May from two different companies. I click through to one of the pages, it says:

WHINESELLER.COM will be listed for sale in the next 24 hours. This domain has been flagged as a premium domain and we expect it to sell quickly. Since you received a priority notice from us, you will be given first chance to acquire this domain.

(Oddly, enough, it *still* says this today which is funny for reasons that will become clear in a moment.) But, boy, a premium domain? It will sell in the next 24 hours? They expect it to sell quickly? Maybe I should panic and try to grab this domain, right? But I decide I still don’t care.

So then on June 4th, I get this email (again, taking out the contact info and links):

Last Call For Domain whineseller.com:

We will be offering whineseller.com for sale today. We see that you previously respond to an email about this domain, but did not submit an offer. This is your last chance to submit an offer on whineseller.com, or we will make other arrangements.

To submit an offer of at least $97 now, click [link]

But I don’t know how much to offer!
Often people do not submit offers, because they don’t know how much to offer. Our minimum offer price is $97. If you submit an offer of at least $97, then you will reserve your position for this domain. In almost all cases, this is enough to win the domain.

My previous response was of the “Stop emailing me you freaking spammers!!!” variety, in case you were curious. It goes on like this for longer but you get the idea. I have two reactions to this email:

1. $97 is too rich for my blood for a domain I don’t really want
2. You say it’ll be for sale in 24 hours which is funny since you’ve been saying that since May

So I delete the email and totally forgot about it. Then, while looking up .co domains on GoDaddy today I decided, just for fun, to look for whineseller.com. Lo and behold, it’s available as a new domain. All that BS about it being in demand, premium and selling for $97 was lies and marketing, it just became available to the public again like any other domain. So I bought it for GoDaddy for less than $10 because, why not?

Of course, I went back to the original email and clicked on their link again. Oddly enough, my domain is still marked as selling in the next 24 hours which is kinda funny since I now own it. (It’s set to redirect to this site but that may take a full day or so if you are trying to play with it.)

The lesson here? I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to get a domain similar to your business or brand name but I am saying there are a lot of unscrupulous people out there, scams and otherwise. Do your research and while it may turn out that your domain is in demand enough to require you to have to bid for it in auction, do it through a legitimate, well known domain provider instead of the first thing you find. 

Anyone have a similar experience with getting the domain name they wanted, please share with us below.

What is Facebook Tagging?

Facebook has the ability to let you tag or reference anything else on Facebook from within a post. You can references other profiles, Facebook pages or even groups in any message that you post on Facebook. This reference appears as a linked word within your update.

How do I tag something on Facebook?

Anytime you are posting an update (be it to a profile, a page or on a friend’s page or profile), you have the option to tag. Comments to existing posts are not available for tagging.

To tag, simply type an @ symbol. This will open up a menu of all your friends, pages you have liked or became a fan of or groups of which you are a member. Start to type the beginning of the word you want to tag to find it easier. Select it from the list and, viola, the title of the item you tagged now appears as a link back to that page, profile or group. Add as many tags to your posts as you wish.

Don’t see the item you want to tag?

• You need to be a friend of the person to tag a profile
• You need to be a member of a group to tag a group
• You need to have liked a page to be able to tag a page

What good does it do?

When you tag someone or something, Facebook includes the tagged object on the page for the page, profile or group that you tagged. In other words, if you tag your friend Sally Jones, your post appears both on your page and on Sally Jones’ page.

What to test it out?

Here’s a super simple way to try this out in real time on Facebook.

1. Like my page on Facebook below. (Just click the little “like” button.)
   
2. Go to either your Facebook profile or page. Click on the update box. (Usually says, “What’s on your mind?”)
3. Type an @ symbol and then start to type until Hillary DePiano shows in the menu. Select the name.
4. Type a message or post a link. How about “Hillary DePiano taught me how to tag people like this!”
5. Post the message. You’ll see your post appear on your page or profile as usual. Then go to the Hillary DePiano page above and, holy cow, it posted there as well.

Congratulations, you are now a proud graduate of Facebook Tagging 101. Think of the marketing opportunities. Or, better yet, how you can use this to annoy your friends!

I have another video for you and this is a bit more of a time commitment at just over 10 minutes but if you feel like you have the hang of it after the first example, you can probably bail halfway through if you are in a rush.

I’m trying to do these videos in one take so please bare with me as I work the kinks out of my little system. I learn more every time I do one of these. And I know the sound overlaps when we switch from Facebook to black but I was so sick of editing at that point I said to hell with it and left it in.

I recommend watching it as large and as high quality as possible because otherwise the text on the Facebook pages is hard to read. Sorry about that. I know to do a closer zoom next time. Like I said, still learning.

But now, let’s talk about leveraging the power of Facebook tagging as a marketing tool, shall we?

PS: Have any additional tips? Follow up questions? Need a specific example of how to use tagging to market your business? Share your thoughts below and myself (and my readers) would be happy to help you out.

I’ve been looking for an easy way to do this for ages so I’m really excited to have found an option that actually works how I need it to.

There are plenty of applications that let you automatically update your Facebook profile status with your Twitter updates but updating the status of your Facebook page was a bigger challenge… until now. The biggest problem was the most apps out there that had the capacity to update your page status would also update your profile status at the same time which I did not want. I wanted it to update my Page status and ONLY my page status.

On top of that, I’m the admin for 6 different Facebook Pages and 8 different Twitter accounts. I needed a way to have the correct Twitter accounts update the right Facebook Pages all while leaving my profile the heck alone. A tall order, right?

Check out the slick Facebook app called, appropriately Smart Twitter for Pages. It lets you easily import multiple Twitter accounts to multiple different Facebook pages. Set-up is simple and just works perfectly which is really all I ask.

Take a look at how it works on my Facebook Page below. Look at the gray text beneath each update. The ones that say, “via Smart Twitter for Pages” are coming directly from my Twitter account.

Advantages of Smart Twitter for Pages:

• It works!
• Free and easy!
• It works independent of your Facebook profile.
  
• Lets you match multiple Twitter accounts with multiple Facebook pages.
  
• Only imports relevant statuses. Meaning, it filters out all the messages that don’t really translate on Facebook. Which means retweets, any post with a hashtag or any post that mentions an @name automatically doesn’t post. I really like this feature. It takes out all the clutter that doesn’t make sense to Facebook only users and only posts the normal statuses. No Follow Friday or Facebook chats clogging up your Facebook page.

Limitations:

• Only allows one Twitter account per Facebook page. (I don’t personally have a need for this but, if you do, this cannot do it so I wanted to mention.)
• Only imports relevant statuses. Didn’t I just list this as a plus? Well, to me, it is a plus but I noticed a lot of people complaining about it as a minus. If you want it to import retweets and hashtagged posts, you are out of luck with this plugin. In the future, it would be great if the ability to filter was opt-in but, of now, the app filters whether you like it or not.

Back in March, I got a private BETA preview of YHIW or YouHaveIWant.com. You can read my initial assessment here.

According to the email they sent out, “From our initial concept, the product has really changed. You”ll be seeing even more development take shape over the coming weeks. Our goal is to help people find what they want through a mobile, social, and hyper-local experience.”

Here is the official press release.

Introducing YouHaveIWant, The Real-Time Matching, Short Message Marketplace

New York, NY (May 27, 2010) – YouHaveIWant (www.YouHaveIWant.com), the real-time, intelligent matching marketplace, officially announces its beta to the public on May 27th, 2010.

Designed to connect people instantly to help them efficiently get what they want, YouHaveIWant is changing the traditional way people use classifieds. According to Co-founder and CEO Naresh Shetty, “YouHaveIWant’s goal is to simplify the process and we have made it much easier to post what you want or have and find a match in real-time. While the typical classifieds experience is seller driven and involves a lot of cumbersome searching and posting, YouHaveIWant allows users to simply say what they want or have in a single sentence. We then alert them as soon as we find their match, and allow them to communicate over IM or email, while maintaining their privacy.”

Simplicity is a major focus of the YouHaveIWant platform. Users have a dashboard where they submit their ‘haves’ and ‘wants’ in 140 characters or less, and manage their postings and matches. They can also email in posts from their smartphones while they are on the go, so they never even need to log on to the web-based app. Other key attributes that set it apart from online listing services are location awareness, real-time intelligent matching, and persistent search. YHIW also maintains the privacy of its users, masking the identity of both sides of any given match. People only reveal their contact information when they choose to.

“While there are hundreds of classifieds sites out there, none really permit users to connect to find matches, instantly, within a few block radius as easily as we do,” explains Co-founder Vik Panda. “An example of this is the great activity we’ve recently seen outside of concert venues, where music fans desperate for tickets post messages from their mobiles and get matched with people who are selling their extras.”

Soon, the company plans to launch features for SMS and Voice communication, giving more options for people to connect via their mobiles. Mobile apps for the iPhone and Android platforms are also currently under development.

YouHaveIWant has been open in limited beta in New York since April. To coincide with the official beta launch, YHIW has just opened up the platform to support multiple locations and sharing via Facebook. “Ultimately, we are providing a service that creates a simple, real-time, mobile, social and hyper-local way to get what you want,” says Shetty.

Launched in late 2009, the YouHaveIWant is a 5 person team based out of the NYU/Poly Incubator in Soho, New York.

www.YouHaveIWant.com

Contact:
Vik Panda
Co-Founder
vik@youhaveiwant.com
160 Varick St., 12th Floor
New York, NY 10013
(917) 687-5920

I wanted to take an opportunity to do some quickies and address a few issues out there that I don’t feel warrant a full blog post each. Since all of this news is about Twitter, it seemed appropriate to keep it short.

Let’s Talk About:
Twitter Kicks Justin Bieber Off Its Trending Topics
What’s the deal? Twitter changed their algorithm for trending topics, meaning that things that get a lot of tweets every day (like Justin Bieber) won’t show unless they are experiencing an unusual spike.
My take? While it meant that Bustin Jieber, Jick Nonas and the like were tending topics for a few days, it really makes it more possible for the common user to have one of their topics trend. From a marketing standpoint, I love this. Get people really excited about your brand name or hashtag, even for a day, and your growth could be exponential if it hits the trending topics. I like knowing that it is possible, even if its only possible in theory.

Let’s Talk About:
Has @Twitter Declared War on Traditional Retweets? #TR
What’s the deal? Twitter blocks retweets from search. The same changes that kept Bieber fever in check also changed the way Twitter search works, excluding anything with “rt” and then an “@” symbol out of search. Considering the fact that Twitter’s own retweet has mixed popularity, people were upset. But then Twitter undid it anyway so it was much to do over nothing.
My take? Since they undid it, it’s kind of a moot point but, as someone who watches a few Twitter keywords and hastags via RSS, this would actually be a very good thing, in my humble opinion. When you are trying to watch a hashtag or keyword or even a chat, retweets really clog up the works and make the results near useless. So if they brought it back, I’d actually appreciate it.

Let’s Talk About:
Links and Twitter: Length Shouldn’t Matter
What’s the deal? People keep reporting this as “Links no longer count towards your 140 characters on Twitter” but that isn’t true, at least from what that post says. All this means is that Twitter is finally developing their own, in house, URL shortener.
My take? About time! Seriously, the fact that you had to go off site to get a URL shortener for all this time is dumb. Only thing I don’t like? They say their plan is to shorten every link on Twitter but I hope they still let us opt out. Saying, “You can visit my blog at http://thewhineseller.com” is a lot more useful than “You can visit my blog at http://bit.ly/aLnU2Q“. Even if they go the same place, sometimes you just want to put the actual URL in someone’s mind.

Let’s Talk About:
The Top Tweets (@toptweets) Twitter account.
What’s the deal? Twitter created an account that highlights the best tweets of the day.
My take? I love this. You can just follow this one account and it lets you catch whatever is trending, popular or hot that day without actually having to follow anyone they highlight. You can retweet or choose to follow the individual users as needed. They also highlight these top tweets in search, making it more likely you’ll get a useful result.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

I’m wondering exactly how blocking on Facebook works. Say I block a user.

As I understand it, it means I don’t see any posts from the blocked person anywhere on Facebook and they cannot see mine. But does that mean that said person can still post on fan pages that I manage and I just don’t see his/her messages? That seems to be the case and I don’t love that. If I block someone and they post something inflammatory on my business page wall or something, I’d like to at least know so that I can delete it. Or better yet, I’d like to be able to stop her from posting on pages I manage entirely. Is there a way to do that?

As for profiles, it seems that pre-blocking, an exchange on someone else’s wall that looked like this:

My Friend #1: It was nice to see Hillary today.
Me: Nice to see you too!
Person: Hillary is a jerk!
My Friend #2: You are the jerk!

Now will just look like this after I block the person:

My Friend #1: It was nice to see Hillary today.
Me: Nice to see you too!
My Friend #2: You are the jerk!

Leaving me confused and never knowing that someone said something about me. Part of me likes this because it lets me just check out of the drama entirely but the other part of me feels like this allows the other people wide open to publicly attack me and I would never know I was even being attacked to report them to Facebook.

If it seems like I’m being paranoid, that is simply because a person I blocked recently is highly mentally unstable and I’m concerned about exactly what this person can and cannot do after being blocked. I am especially concerned about how it works on a Facebook fan page. There is a very high risk of this person trying to post things on my Page and I have no way of knowing if they do so.

Facebook’s official word on this doesn’t give me any more info:

A block prevents specific people from viewing your profile. Any ties you currently have with the people you block will be broken (friendship connections, friend details, etc.). Your profile will not be visible to them and you will not appear in their search results or friend lists. Blocking is mutual, so they will also become invisible to you as well.

Keep in mind that blocking someone may not prevent all communications and interactions in third-party applications, and does not extend to elsewhere on the Internet.

Please note that removing a block will not restore a connection. If you block a friend and then remove that person from you Block List, you will need to send them a new friend request.

But it also says here:

Blocking allows you to prevent most interactions with someone on Facebook. People you block won’t be able to find you in searches, view your profile, or contact you with pokes, Wall posts, or personal messages. In addition, they will not be able to see your Wall posts, comments on mutual friends’ Walls, or that you are a member of the same group as them.

They will, however, see your comments on content that is posted by a mutual friend. You will see their comments as well.

But this isn’t true. Conversations on the walls of mutual friends where this person had posted a comment are now simply not showing that person’s comments as illustrated above. So I am really confused.

Anyone with any experience with this that can share your thoughts would be very appreciated!

I am long overdue on a post about DISQUS, the comment system that I use on all of my blogs and absolutely LOVE. I owe you a more thorough review and overview on that service soon.

But I’ve been experiencing some strange spam through their comment system I wanted to point out today. Here is a screenshot that I took earlier from my Twitter account.

All four of those posts came through Disqus and all four are from the same post from this blog (this one). At first glance, those look like intelligent comments on the article, right? Except that they are just copy and paste excerpts from my post. The link in the post takes you back to The Whine Seller, no funny business there.

Now I was able to delete the comments from the post using Disqus’ comment moderation system. But these four tweets are still public for the world of Twitter to see.

This spam strikes me as odd. After all, aren’t I weirdly getting more benefit from this spam than the spammer? Curiosity may cause you (or me for that matter) to click on the account that tweeted the link but the retweeted username AND the link given are mine. So they are basically spamming my link for me. That’s… weird.

Now I usually follow anyone who retweets me so that may be their game but even so, it seems like a lot of work to just get me to follow a spam account. What do the spammers gain from this?

Anyway, I wanted to share this with you because it was, frankly, odd. Have you been experiencing anything like this? What do you think the spammers are gaining from this strategy?

So the Kindle is big news so you’d think that Amazon Associates members would be raking in big money referring people to these popular eBooks. Well, while associates could refer buyers to Kindle books in the early days with chicklet buttons and more, the option to refer customers to Kindle books went away shortly thereafter and never came back.

Until now:

Dear Amazon Associate:

We’re sending this note to announce a couple of changes to the Associates Program that relate to Amazon Kindle. Kindle is the #1 bestselling, most-gifted, and most wished-for product at Amazon.com. Please read on for further details.

Earn Advertising Fees on Kindle Books

Amazon is excited to announce that effective May 1, 2010, you can earn advertising fees on Kindle books. With over 500,000 books, including 105 of 112 New York Times® Best Sellers, Kindle books represent another great way to earn money advertising Amazon products. Advertising fees range from 4 to 8.5%.

Kindle Device Advertising Fee Rates Have Changed

Also effective May 1, 2010, Kindle devices have a new advertising fee. Kindle devices will be included in the “General Products” category and are eligible for 4 to 8.5% in advertising fees depending on the number of qualifying products you refer. Kindle newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other subscriptions will also be included in the “General Products” category. See the Operating Agreement for more information.

New Kindle Landing Page: Build Links to Kindle & Make Money

We’d like to invite you to browse through our new Kindle page in Associates Central which gives you an overview of all the tools you’ll need to easily build links and earn money on everything Kindle related, all in one place!

There are several simple ways to earn advertising fees on Kindle, and now Kindle books:

• Link directly to the Kindle detail page using the following link format, replacing “YOUR_ID_HERE-20” with your Associates ID: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015T963C?tag=YOUR_ID_HERE-20
• Link directly to the Kindle books page using the following link format, replacing “YOUR_ID_HERE-20” with your Associates ID: http://www.amazon.com/b?node=1286228011&tag=YOUR_ID_HERE-20
• Display Kindle banners – New Rotating Kindle banners are available in various sizes
• Visit product links and select “Kindle Store” from the drop down menu

In addition to earning advertising fees on Kindle devices and Kindle books, Associates can also earn advertising fees on qualifying sales of Kindle accessories and magazine, newspaper, & blog subscriptions.

We want to thank you for your continued participation in the Amazon Associates Program, and invite you to start or continue advertising Kindle devices and Kindle books. Stay connected by following us on Twitter and finding us on Facebook. If you have any questions or feedback on this announcement or the Associates Program, please contact us via the contact form.

Sincerely,

The Amazon Associates Program

What amuses me is how they act like this is something new and not something they are giving back to us but, either way, I’m glad to have the option to refer people to Kindle Books again. Especially now that Kindle books can be read even without owning a Kindle, it’s great that affiliates can join in the fun. For authors and publishers, this is also great news because it gives website owners more of a reason to promote Kindle content.

Will this give Kindle the edge over iPad and other eBook readers? Your move, everyone else.

Oh and if you were planning on doing some shopping on the Kindle anyway, may I recommend this inexpensive little novella by yours truly:

That sentence above was the top search term bringing people to this website a few days ago. Now, apparently it was taking them to this article about Twitter limits, which is fine, but it worries me that people are searching for this exact phrase. So I want to have a little talk with this searcher, if you don’t mind.

Dear anonymous hoards of searchers looking for the phrase “How to force a person to follow you on Twitter”:

I couldn’t help but notice that you were looking for this. There are quite a few of you looking for this, apparently, based on the number of times these words got you here. But since you are here, let me explain something to you.

You don’t want what you think you want.

No matter the reasons why you may think you want to be able to force people to follow you on Twitter, you don’t really want that. No, I’m serious, you don’t.

Because let’s think about it. How could you “force” someone to follow you on Twitter? The very phrase implies you are making them do it against their will. So are you trying to trick them? Fool them? Scam them somehow into following you?

And then what? As soon as they realize they are following someone that they didn’t want to follow, they are going to get annoyed. They are going to, at the least, unfollow you, at the most, block you and report you to Twitter. Why would you possibly want that?

Is it a celebrity? Ex-girlfriend? Someone you are a little obsessed with and you want to follow back for your own reasons?

Instead of working on figuring out how to force them into a follow that will lead nowhere, why not work on how you use Twitter. After all, if you are charming/funny/useful on Twitter, chances are good that most people will want to follow you anyway of their own free will instead of being forced into it. You’re going to get higher quality followers that way who will actually stay around and be engaged and interested in what you have to say.

And if all you are trying to do is build your follow count, you’re missing the whole point of Twitter. Meaningless hordes of followers are nothing compared to a small but useful, targeted number of followers. Follow people that you are interested in and, if they like you, they will follow you back. Those are the followers that matter.

To anyone reading this, what would you say to someone who typed in this search? If you are someone who searched for this sentence, maybe you can explain to us what you are trying to find so we can steer you in the right direction.

In the meantime, you have to follow me on Twitter. I’m FORCING you to.

If you logged onto Facebook today, you probably noticed something a little different with Facebook pages. If you didn’t look, let me show you the difference:

Instead of giving the user the option to “Become a fan” of a page (such as the page as yours truly, Hillary DePiano) now you have the option to “Like” me instead.

Facebook’s stated logic for the change was that people hit the like button much more often than they fan something so they got rid of the fanning. I’m not 100% sure that logic is sound.

Off the bat, the one thing I like about this is that I always felt weird asking people to “become my fan.” It always felt like I was saying, “Worship me!” because the word fan has so many more connotations. So I feel much more comfortable asking you to just “Like” me on Facebook which just sounds like less of a commitment. You may not feel like you are my fan but you do like me or you wouldn’t be reading this blog so it seems like it could result in more people following your page.

However, I can see why many people are upset about this. Let me quote a Twitter friend, Jen Lindsay, who sums it up pretty well:

not so much a fan of the new “like” button. A “fan” really cares about something, someone who “likes” can go either way. -@jelindsay

My cousin (14 years old) is a serial “fan”-er. She easily fans about 20 things a day, I’m not exaggerating or joking. She fans whatever she thinks is funny, so true, etc. To me, the way she wantonly fans things, you’d think that the “Like” feature would fit well with her needs but instead, it irritated her. Being a fan of something, she protested when we discussed this back before it was implemented, is very different than liking something. When you like something, you just like one thing. Whereas if you are a fan of something, you like everything about it.

That is my attempt to sum up the opinion of a teenage to show the other side. I for one am not sure that I see it the same way but, again, I don’t use the fan feature as often as she does so I feel like she may be the authority here. I’m looking at this more from the perspective of a Facebook Page owner whereas she is looking at it more as a Facebook user.

But the marketer/business owner in me is curious in a different way. Does this mean that if I tweet out a link to my Facebook page and that you like a single post I put out, you now “like” my whole page. While this would definitely get my page more followers quickly, this seems like one of those sneaky tactics like adding me to your mailing list without asking me.

Might the result be that more people block your updates because they are annoyed that they are seeing them, not realizing the cause?

Might people become more reluctant to “like” things in the future?

Or is this like all Facebook changes where people complain for a day and are used to it in less than a week?

I can really see both sides of the debate. What do you think?

So I was looking at Alexa for another site of mine and decided to look at this website while I was there and this is what they told me:

Based on internet averages, thewhineseller.com is visited more frequently by males who are over 65 years old, have children, have no college education and browse this site from school.

My reaction was…really?

I mean, OK, I can buy that I have more male readers than female, business is still mostly male dominated so that fits with my expectations. Over 65 year old men who have children? That one surprised me but, still, within the realm of believability. If you are running your own successful business, you are probably a bit past middle age so I am can buy that as well.

But over 65 year old men with children that didn’t graduate college and browse this site from school? What school are these over 65 year old men in? This one makes no sense at all to me. Or does this mean that most of my readers just work in a school?

Now their page doesn’t say how they measure these stats but you are welcome to review them yourself here.

I have to believe they aren’t accurate but, what do I know?

So let me ask you this, just for fun. If you had to guess who reads this website, what would be your guess?

And, hey, if you are an over 65 year old man with children, no college education and are browsing this from a school, say hi!

Of all the new platforms and marketplaces out there, the one that caught my fancy the most recently was eCrater. The biggest selling point is that they are 100% free with no fees. Think of them as a craigslist style posting board that looks and feels more like an e-commerce site like eBay.

Unlike a lot of new marketplaces, they actually had a lot of people buying and selling the exact kinds of items I usually sell (collectibles) so that was a big selling point for me as a buyer and seller both. Then I got really ticked at the platform because of a security flaw so I deleted my account entirely before I really got to give it an honest try. (In the interest of clarity, this was about a year ago so they have likely fixed this security flaw by now, I haven’t checked. It also may be something that normal people would have considered a minor thing and I may be a diva. No one can say for sure. )

But I still thought the marketplace had a lot of potential and I wanted to find out more about whether it was worth starting up a presence on eCrater. So I have enlisted Stacy Anderson (on Twitter as @itsmestacy) who has found success selling online on both eBay and eCrater to give us a review from the perspective of someone who has used eCrater extensively. Selling clothing out of Fort Worth, Texas, Stacy has been selling on eBay since July 2000 and on her own eCrater websites TheCheapSkirt.com and TheUglySweaterShop.com for a few months now.

I’d really like to thank you for joining us on the blog today to share your experiences. First thing, can you tell you a little about yourself and how you got started selling online.

I started selling just things I had but no longer needed around my house 10 years ago. I was amazed because back then you could put a pair of used Levis on eBay and get $20 for them, without even having a picture. This was about $19.50 more than you’d get for them at a garage sale. Back then, auctions were the only way to buy on eBay and it was exciting starting something out at a penny and seeing the price go up. (That doesn’t happen very often on eBay in the clothing categories anymore, I’d say not for the past 5 years or so.)

I was living in Wisconsin at the time and had access to a lot of Green Bay Packers related items, and breweriana (everyone had beer signs in their basements up there), so I did sell a little of both in addition to clothing, but after I moved to Texas 3 years ago I began to focus primarily on clothing, shoes and accessories.

Was the move to eCrater motivated out of anything specific that happened on eBay or were you just trying out other things?

EBay’s price changes were a bit like the story of the frog and the boiling pot of water for me. A little increase here, a little increase there, I thought I could take them in stride.

But as the fees went up for me, search visibility went down as did sales. I found myself doing more and more advertising and legwork to bring in customers. Auctions would end with only one bidder, if that. Store items were difficult for buyers to find in search. Once Google stopped accepting individual feeds to Google Base (which was my main source of eBay store traffic), my sales were nearly at a standstill.

I decided that if I were going to to do the legwork to bring buyers to my items, it wasn’t worth it for me to pay eBay. I’d looked at their “job” as my advertising, and when it came to store items, they weren’t doing their job.

So I moved my store items to TheCheapSkirt.com at eCrater. And on that particular store, I can safely say that I haven’t sold any more or less there than I had been selling out of my store at eBay. So I wouldn’t call it a success, other than the fact I’ve saved on fees for those items that have sold.

However…

Sort of on a lark, around Halloween I opened TheUglySweaterShop.com, another eCrater store, primarily as a resource for people who needed something truly awful for an Ugly Sweater Party.

I’d blogged an “ugly sweater of the week” for a while and got a bit of a response, so when I’d see one when I was out on an inventory run, I’d pick it up. Pretty soon I had quite a “collection”, and I started listing them.

I realized that with a relatively new web presence, I wouldn’t rank high in Google searches, so I turned to social media instead. I started Tweeting about these ugly sweaters. I started a Facebook Fan page. I listened to my customers: they would lament that the sweaters on eBay were always too expensive, and I listed mine for less. I posted links to Ugly Sweater Party charity events. I retweeted pictures people had posted on Twitter of themselves modeling their own ugly sweaters. I became involved in the “ugly sweater community”, as it were.

Within 2 weeks my page views had skyrocketed. In the 6-week peak “ugly sweater” selling season, I had over 30,000 page views and had sold more than 75% of what I had listed, with emails and tweets asking for more. I couldn’t keep up! I was so unprepared for the success! And 75% of those page views came via Google (eCrater uploads a listing feed to Google Base 2x a week automatically for all of their stores–they became a Product Search Marketplace Partner with Google in November of 2009).

In comparison, I had one tacky Christmas sweater listed on eBay as a fixed price listing for a month. Only 40 page views. In an entire month. AND I was a Top Rated Seller at the time.

I moved it to TheUglySweaterShop.com and it sold within 24 hours and I had emails asking about it from others who also wanted it and missed out.

I know I brought you in to talk about eCrator but you just gave us some fantastic examples of using social networking to build a business that really should be highlighted. I want to go back to your great ideas there in another post for sure but for now, let’s move on to … What sets eCrater apart from the other selling platforms out there?

Well, it is free. Free is good. And it is simple–there is no HTML in the listings (some may see that as a drawback, but I’ve seen so many poorly-formatted eBay listings that I find a text description to be very easy on the eyes).

They are a Google Product Search Marketplace Provider which, as I stated before, had a great bearing on the amount of traffic my eCrater stores have been getting. They have a fully integrated Google Checkout, so there is no fiddling with buttons/waiting for Google to approve your site, etc.

They are responsive to user requests. In the past I’ve asked them to add categories in their store structure, and they were added within days. They were very responsive. I’ve also requested an erroneous feedback be removed from my account, and they were quick to address that as well. Worlds apart from eBay in that regard!

I think eCrater is a great place to get a feel for how it would feel to sell somewhere other than eBay if you’ve only sold there. I learned all about Google Checkout via eCrater, including coupon codes, promotions, etc.

Some people I think confuse eCrater with eBay in that they think they can list things there and just “sit” on them, and the traffic will come in. It doesn’t work that way. Yes, people can shop all eCrater stores from the main eCrater.com page (think of that as an online mall of sorts), but the majority of traffic comes from people finding you from somewhere else. I’d say less than 1% of my traffic comes directly from eCrater, and those most likely are from postings on their message boards.

What do you feel like eCrater could improve on?

I’ve asked them to look into issues I’ve run across: I can’t seem to get some of the calculated international shipping options to work properly, their USPS Express Mail service states it is 1 day shipping time, which can be misleading to customers who are in areas where it takes 2 days for Express Mail (I asked them to switch it to 1-2 days after I refunded a disappointed customer who lived in a 2-day area who needed an item for a party and it arrived a day late).

Also if two people buy the exact same thing within minutes of each other, it can show as “double ordered”–had that happen a few times during the peak of “ugly sweater season” because traffic in my store was *that* brisk!

Although I’d like to see some more “customizability” (is that a word?)[Ed note: It is now! ] in my store (layouts, the look of the landing page, etc), I realize it is a free site and the more bells and whistles they add, the more support they need and that costs money. I’m glad to see they put the focus on supporting the functionality of the site, rather than on making it prettier. If your core functions don’t work (like we’ve seen with eBay’s search), then it doesn’t matter how pretty something is if nobody will see it.

Where else have you sold? How do those other marketplaces compare to eCrater or even eBay?

I was a very early member of Bonanzle, but stopped selling there once they implemented a fee structure. Initially I was drawn to them the same reason I was drawn to ecrater: the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) approach they had to the site with no HTML in listings, ease of use, etc. Then with the fees they also started to move away from that, and since I hadn’t gotten any traffic in a few months, I didn’t feel it was right for me.

I have and still sell books on Amazon.com, but from my own personal stash. I love to read!

I used to sell on Half.com but since they merged their feedback in with eBay’s, I became concerned, as people are more likely to leave neutrals there and just one or two bad ratings can put my selling status on eBay at risk now that I’ve gone from a Powerseller to a small volume seller.

I used Auctiva to list on eBay and prior to eCrater, had considered getting one of their off-eBay store packages, but then they had that nasty situation with a virus that I didn’t feel was handled well, along with the way they implemented their fee increase (fee schedules changing almost daily, pressure to “lock in” a rate before it changed–total hard sell) and I no longer felt comfortable entrusting my business to them.

Putting your loyalties as a seller aside, which is your favorite online store to shop at and why?

Amazon.com, hands down. Mostly because I’ve talked my family members into making wish lists, so Christmas shopping is a breeze! They all live across the country so I just click, pay and have it shipped out!

With a depressed economy and all the changes in retail happening all the time, where do you see your business in 5 years? How are you adapting?

I don’t see myself as an online clothing magnate in 5 years, or anything so grand. I just feel fortunate to be able to do this as my primary source of income for the past two years. Despite our current economic crunch, I truly believe that by working for myself, the only thing that could be holding me back from more success is myself. That is why I’ve continually reassessed my business model and make changes, rather than pine for “the lost days of eBay”, a rut I see some of my fellow sellers get stuck in.

I’ve been recently starting on yet ANOTHER business model, this one ironically going back to using eBay as it will be auction-based, rather than fixed price. I don’t see it supplanting my other two stores, rather it will supplement them. I’m finding diversification makes me feel safest–not keeping all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.

Before next fall, I may move TheUglySweaterShop.com to its own space with its own shopping cart, as I feel it may have outgrown eCrater. I’d like to be able to better integrate my Ugly Sweater blog at uglysweaters.wordpress.com with the sales portion of the site, as well as make it more visually appealing and fun to shop. Another former eBay clothing seller, ShopNastyGal.com, is a great inspiration for me, she seems to have transitioned VERY successfully from eBay to a stand-alone site and has a great social media following. I think social media is a very inexpensive way to market and to keep in touch with what people really want.

I honestly see Google as the key to getting buyers in the future, as long as eBay is more and more cumbersome to weed through. I think it will matter less where your items are, and more than they are found by buyers. I actually searched for something on eBay today, and got a message that “Your search could not be performed at this time. Please try again later.” I tried it again later, and got the same message. I found what I was looking for on Google instead.

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I really want to thank Stacy for taking the time to answer my questions. I wanted to be able to give the platform a thorough review and evaluation and am very glad she was able to stop in and give us the in-depth perspective of someone doing some selling “in the trenches” as it were.

But what about you? Have you sold on eCrater? What were your experiences with the marketplace? Has Stacy convinced you to give it another try?