The first rule of business, is never sell something you love. Otherwise, you may as well be selling your children. Hugh Macleod

At home our walls are bulging from the amount of extra stuff we seem to acquire. In this time of loss of jobs and high prices it is nice to hear about any amount of money to be saved or gained. Well even eBay has felt the pinch and so they have a new offer to get people using their service again. eBay usually charges to put items into an auction on their site but the first five auctions of every month will be free to put up. Now this may not save you a bundle but when you think that the whole goal is to sell an item every last bit of saving is nice. I have been reading through some of the comments about this and the general consensus is good because people are using some of the savings to offset free shipping. Free shipping on eBay almost always results in more bids. The flipside of this is also nice. Now if I decided to purchase an item the likelihood of me getting free shipping will go up. To put it simply if you have a bunch of stuff crowding you try selling a few items to begin with and go from there. Also I do have classes in how to buy and sell at PPL. Sign up and stop on by.

“The interesting thing was, I started eBay off as a hobby so it was free of charge.” Pierre Omidyar

As of February 20^th the rates of eBay will be changing. The initial fees will lower and this is good news all around. However to make up for losses eBay has raised end fees much to the displeasure of sellers. There are several other changes that will affect both sellers and buyers alike. Gallery images will now be free allowing buyers to quickly see photos even before they open the auction. As per usual with every change comes problems and resentment. So sellers have decided to strike on the dates February 18th through the 25^th. They plan to do no selling of any kind on the site. Many spokespersons have said this is a normal routine that the auction site goes through every time a change in rates happens. I personally do not think much will happen other than the usual acceptance of rate adjustments but people should know this is going on. So how does this concern you? My only advice is to get all your shopping done by those dates and just sit back and see what happens.

“I don't mind that I'm fat. You still get the same money.”Marlon Brando

So you are on eBay looking for the bargain of the century but item you are looking for is overpriced because of the popularity. You could try Fat Fingers. This is a site that uses spelling mistakes to our advantage. The idea is if you are the only one to discover an auction then the competition will be nonexistent and you will get it for a cheaper price. All you do is type a search in and it will do a search for every possible misspelling of the word or words in your search. When I started selling on eBay in 1997 I learned this valuable lesson. I was selling a Transformer’s sticker album. Now proper punctuation forces me to put an apostrophe but that means that only those who type in the exact wording would have found my auction. At that time it was early days and I did not realize my mistake until the end of the auction which meant a $30 dollar item went for $5.00. If you are going to be doing some shopping on eBay give this a try.

"Set the WABAC Machine to 1895" Mr. Peabody to Sherman

When you look at some websites do you ever wonder what they looked like years ago, maybe when they first started? EBay is a good example. It started in 1997 and has gone through change after change. They added new features, changed their logo and adapted new practices as the Internet grew. What watch need is a way to see what it was like at that point. The Wayback Machine has been archiving the Internet since 1996 and almost has 2 billion pages. You can search for any site and if it has it archive it will be broken up by year and certain archiving dates through that year. It is a very interesting reference to see how much it has changed. it gives some real perspective and helps out the student or researcher to find information that may have been removed years ago. Also they feature categories like how web pages were reacting to the election of 2000 or any other large event. Give it a try to see the past of the net.

“Eliminating what is not wanted or needed is profitable in itself.” Phil Crosby

Many times I am searching on eBay and I am overwhelmed by the results. There are many ways to cut some of this down to size. One easy way is to use the minus sign. Lets say I was looking up something using the word computer. Now I get every possible model and maker. I realize I do not want one of those makers in this list, lets say Gateway. To do this my search should look like this computer -gateway. From now on if gateway is mentioned it will be eliminated from my search. However if I wanted to eliminate multiple words from the search I use parenthesis. An example of this search looks like this computer -(gateway, sony). I use this all the time but not just for eBay. It also works while searching on a search engine like Yahoo or Google. Give it a try.

The Grilled Cheese Madonna and 99 Other of the Weirdest, Wackiest, Most Famous eBay Auctions Ever

Sorry no site today but how about a book pick instead? If you have ever been on eBay or heard of wild or strange auction than this book is for you. The Grilled Cheese Madonna and 99 Other of the Weirdest, Wackiest, Most Famous eBay Auctions Ever book is a fun read. It lists all the bizarre and major auctions that have made headlines throughout eBay's history. PPL does have it in the system, so check it out and give it a try!