I wouldnt take McCains advice about becoming a millionair on e-bay.
I own a record store and do to down loading and e-bay my shop has gone from doing $800 a day in walk in sales to sometimes not seeing a customer at all for three or four days in a row.
I had to turn to e-bay to bump the monthly numbers, that is not what I want to do for a living! I could do that from home if I had to. I want to own a shop that people love and shop in.
But in the last 2 months I have seen my e-bay sales go from $3000 a month tp about $600.
He doesnt seem to understand that when people dont have money, they dont shop! not in my shop , not on e-bay or amazom! I dont think he knows what being broke looks like or feels like. And e-bay isnt an answer to anything that matters.

Unfortunately they refuse to address the real problem, jobs, good paying jobs. What good is it to have a job that doesn't meet or exceed your needs.

Then you have to take on a second. Your kids are without supervision and guidance. Which leads to other things and so on.

I feel if these Corporations don't want to have a manufacturing base here let them leave and tax the hell out of what they sell here.

EBay let 1000 employees go yesterday, so you're not alone. I lost faith in ebay when they raised the rates, I do cowboy leather crafts, saddles and bridles, spur straps, cowboy cuffs, etc. Last year I made a ton, then they raised their rates and some of my items weren't worth placing on ebay. It was great while it lasted.

These clowns have been selling out our infrastructure for over 40 years. Now the reality is starting to show. I have been watching people buy Japanese, then Korean, and now the Chinese are going to dump on our market more than they have. I was blown away that the Korean car could be called a KIA and no one got upset. Mitsubishi with its three diamonds that are actually propellers, remember the Zero!

This McSame who was pushing more free trade, is now in the last weeks telling everyone he is going to create new jobs here at home. What a crock. He sounds more and more like Obama every day. Too bad everyone is 6 months behind Obama's lead in reality.

My sum-total experience on eBay was buying a $5 RePro Mood Ring for this 70s party I went to. Other than that, I prefer the Flea Market/Swap Meet action down at the local dragstrip... cut out the middle man, you know...

I Got A Giant Size Flag Pin A Could Sell But I Would Rather Give It Away To Tina Fay Click to view attachment

Remember back in the 80's and early 90's how the mantra was BUY AMERICAN! Then Wal-Mart decided to go to CHina, so the hell with that plan. Now it's TRY AND BUY AMERICAN!!! Well, if any one wants really good American made leather horse products, then it's easy to buy American, other stuff, not so much. BTW the best rawhide reata I have ever had was made by an old man in Mexico, I paid him $120.00, here it would cost $500.00. NAFTA in action, but I helped that man buy some food, so it's ok to me. My hypocrisy goes that far.

You're a good soul, Tap
I wish I was in need of tooled leather goods, but unfortunately, no horses allowed in my 900 square foot condo.

Nameless--I was just thinking about that day and I remembered he wanted only $60.00, and I said no, and he said $50? I said no, it's too low!!! I actually haggled up with him!!! Now I don't know if you know what a reatta is, but it's a lasso made of braided rawhide, they are very hard to make, and they take forever, plus one little defect and they are worthless with a cow on the end, so I made him charge me more!!! Some day maybe they'll let you have mini horses, they are so cool, the size of a lab, and very funny. It's like a horse that comes up to your knee!!!

Was I out of line, too pessimistic, when, as eBay first got really going and making news, I saw it as an omen of the end, the "Pawning of America", v. 1.0, little more than an online yard sale, and not as the best thing since un-elected Republicans?

A pony would cheer me up...

(Believe me: my 100 lb. Lab is plenty big in this place)

Have you considered going online as well as having the store? I know due to my schedule and my uneasiness in crowds (social phobia runs in my family), I do a lot more shopping online than actually going store to store.

You might have to do some advertising in order to get noticed but once you get noticed you should see sales pick up.

I'll top that with my almost 110 pound Rottweiler and 102 pound Golden Malamute.

Steve-- I think the story of ebay is quite interesting, it was started by a guy whose girlfriend wanted to sell some stuff, so he built the website for her, I suspect to get laid more, they had a name Echo Bay, but it was taken, so they went with ebay. It took off, but not before she broke up with him (DUMMY), then it went wild, and he became filthy rich. The problems started when he started taking advice from get rich quick types, and it started to spiral from there, IMO. When they raised their posting rates, postings dropped considerably, IMO, the only people who stayed on were those who sold in big volume, and it cut out the little guy. One site I know of is etsy.com, it's an arts and crafts site, and very cool. Unless you make leather goods geared towards horses. My wifes friend is a brilliant stained glass artist, very talented, and she is on Etsy. They charge like $5 bucks a month to advertise, so it is very good for the artisan.

Ebay will lose a lot more business as they continue to raise their rates to the point where sellers can't make any money unless they charge a lot more for their goods. A lot of people are moving to Ebid because of Ebay's last raise in rates.

Personally, while I have gotten a couple items on Ebay, it just confuses me. I like Amazon.com and for old books I love ABE books.

OMG you win. Do they hog up the bed, too?

The Rottweiler does. She's not as bad as my male Rott was, he could manage to stretch himself out to the point where he almost reached both sides of my king sized bed, but she does give it the old canine try. The Golden has so much fur she gets too warm on the bed and jumps down to sleep on the cool floor sometime in the middle of the night.

RM--Is ABE books a website? I'd love to know the address. BTW, we have to almost ask for a place to sleep now. The puppies are very stretchy, as in they take the best places to sleep and to hell with us!!! The pit bull, Bruce, just stays close to mama, until she get's up to shower, then he's in my face for his morning hugs. THEN, the puppies run him off too!!! I could be a contortionist with these 3!!!

I have a huge bed, the dogs get half, I get half. I tell them that when they get jobs and help pay the mortgage, then they can have the entire bed and I'll get one of my own. Until then, they stay on their half or they can sleep on the floor.

Unless of course its really cold, then I let Schatzi snuggle up against me.

I love my dogs, but I got over being pushed off the bed really quick. Damien was really bad about that, and it was like moving a boulder uphill trying to get that dog to move!

Abe books website (sorry, its not all capitalized like I thought): Abe Books

I love old books and you can get some really sweet deals here. I can't afford true first editions but its really cool having older books that were printed in the 40s or earlier. I'm currently waiting on a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, Huckleberry Finn and The Prince and the Pauper.

RM--I relate, I have a saying, my house my couch, my house my bed, my house my bathroom. I have a crappy old Lazy Boy that my dog Arnie loves to take over, I say c'mon get out and he put's the old ok, I gotta stretch on my way out, I love dumping him on floor by tipping the chair!!! He acts like WTF I was moving, and I say not fast enough buddy! As for Abe books, I will check them out big time, I am not looking to amass books that have value in dollars, just good books that are no longer in print. I tried ebay, but i suspect that some sellers have alternate accounts that drive up the price. I will say this, my local library has books from the turn of the last century, written by people who lived here, so amazing. We actually had Dillinger taking a room in a hotel here! WOW, so cool!!!!

YES! How is it that they weigh 100 lbs. awake, but 200 lbs. asleep? One of those inexplicable dog phenomena, I guess...

I have three books written by a local author about the mob connections in the LaSalle-Peru area where I grew up. Steve something or other, can't remember his name now. I'll have to look at the books when I get home. One of the books is call Capone's Cornfields and he did write a book about The Starved Rock murders but that one is out of print. I lost my copy to a friend of mine. Lent it and never got it back.

In fact, if you like ghost stories, check out Prairieghosts.com. Troy (friend I lost my book to) has written a lot of books about Illinois and what's so good about what he writes is the history he puts in there. Troy knows his history. You might enjoy his books as well.

They take on double mass when they sleep.

Lots of people get their buddies to bid up their items or use alternate accounts. No real way to stop it. I know a guy that ran a baseball card shop during the 80's and 90's. It was going downhill when ebay started up and ebay saved his business. For a couple of years anyway. He used to use friends of his to bid up cards occasionally.
I got burned on there a couple of times. The usual story. I was selling a couple of diecast Nascar cars and sold the first one for a good price. Then the second one was bid up to where I was happy. That buyer turned out to supposedly be some ladies kid. She emailed me telling me he did not have permission to buy anything and she wasn't going to pay for it. In the couple of days it took to find that out the same cars were widely distributed and dropped in value. I did not know that was going to happen and eventually ended up giving it to a fan of that particular driver.
My ebay career didn't last long. The time I spent hunting items to sell and shipping and monitoring auctions probably had me at about $3 bucks an hour.

Well McCain has my vote. His plan is to have us all sell random shit to each other on the internet -- an internet he doesn't use or understand.

Grampy advertises Ebay for righty Meg Whitman CEO who is one of his advisors and millionaire donor. Weird looking woman, btw

Don't worry, Ebay will save us all

Rottmom--I am very familiar with praireghosts.com, I go there all the time. I'm kind of a ghost nut, especially when weird shit happens in my house!!!

Have you guys heard of http://oklahomacity.craigslist.org/? You can buy and sell there for free...the guys that own it DIDN'T sell out when they were offerd millions for their site! It is way cool!

Troy is a really cool guy. I got to finally meet him 3 years ago when I went on one of his tours of Starved Rock State Park. Before that we emailed every once in a while. I have a bunch of his books, a lot of signed first editions that aren't worth anything right now but could be later on.

So you got one of those houses too eh? I grew up in a couple weird homes and three of my four brothers have those kind of homes as well. Well, I suppose it's only natural since two live in homes we lived in as kids. The one house was built by our great-grandfather.

Craigslist is another story, a horror story!
It is monitored by users any user all users, people selling things like you have, can and do flag all your ads and remove them. People send death threats to each other there also.
god forbid they find out you own a business, because they will broadcast you as a huge piece of shit that doesnt belong there.

To top it off, craigslist was purchased by e-bay a couple of years ago simply to keep it from becoming a paysite that had the means to be competitive.

Ebay only has a small percentage ownership in Craigslist. They did attempt to buy them out, and there was a lawsuit between the two. Ebay does not own them. Yes there is often abuse of the flagging ads but we have gotten great deals on landscaping items, and have sold a few things too. We also bought a car from a seller.

Rottmom--Our new house is nothing compared to our old house, now that was weird. My wife grew up next door, which in the country means down the road. She told me how there was kid that lived there when she was growing up and they took the bus together. One day he simply disappeared. No one took notice, no one said shit. Later after she bought the house as a new bride, she tells me something was wrong with the house. Now, 35 years later, I can attest, it is fucking haunted. By whom? I don't know. I saw enough weird shit to convince me that something bad happened there, and we still have a missing kid. This place is only 15 years old, but I dug up a grave while digging fence posts, and all I can say is this- One minute no flies, next minute, a swarm, and an auger full of hair, like human hair. 3 feet down, and out in the field. CREEPY!!!!

Oh yeah, Craigslist is real great. People posting other people's stuff on there. Read a story how a guy came home and found people walking out of his house with his possessions because someone posted he was moving and everything had to go for no charge.

http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW...J.34e92f1d.html

Don--Wow, I wonder if I could sell of the corn growing in the fields around me? I would make a killing.