Dropped eBay from My Making-Money-Online Experiment
I decided not to do any more auctions on eBay, open an eBay store or anything eBay related for my online experiments for the following reasons:
1. Lack of valuable items – So far, I’ve been auctioning my junk items, mostly books. Their values don’t justify my effort and my time.
2. Time consuming – I’ve spent a lot of time doing administrative stuffs like list the items (writing descriptions, taking pictures and so on), replying to the auction’s winner, emailing and calling my mother to ship the items, and many other overheads.
Not worth it.
I thought about creating an eBay store to sell local crafts, Bohemian crystals, Czech glasses, ceramics and willow baskets from the Czech Republic. I later decided against this idea:
1. High-risked – Crystals, glasses and ceramics break easily. They need extra superb handling care. I will have little control when these items leave my hands.
2. Import/export taxes – These items are shipped from another country, thus I have to deal with international taxes, another hassles, which I don’t want to deal with right now.
3. eBay store – A friend of mine runs an eBay Store, selling Cisco routers. It’s his full-time job. He has an office, stays there more than 8 hours a day, and takes all kinds of calls from vendors and buyers. This is not something I want to spend my time on as eBay was initially a mere hobby project.
By dropping eBay, I have more time to focus on other activities I enjoy much more: updating my blogs frequently, promoting my existing travel sites, writing quality reviews and articles, researching and sniffing for new online trends, and possibly tempering with making-money-offline experiments.
If you have the time and lots of good items from your garage, eBay might be a good side business for you.
Video – History of Poland in 10 minutes
This video reminds me of Poland, the first European country I’d ever lived.
Is Facebook better than MySpace?
You’ve betcha.
I have finally succumbed to the web 2.0 hype and joined Facebook, and am very glad for having done so.
1. I reconnected with my old friends after losing contact with them since college and many others whom I don’t normally keep in touch.
2. If everybody whom I invited accepts my invitation, I will save a lot of time for keeping up with personal emails. Of course, Facebook does not substitute emails for important and sensitive matters, however, it is perfectly suitable for short and simple “Hey” and “What’s up” messages.
3. I linked two of my travel sites on my profile; one of them doubled the unique visitor within a single day. Wow! Talk about exposure.
Using Facebook and studying how it works, I can not understand the MySpace phenomenon. I joined MySpace long ago and found absolutely no use for it. The interface is a complete mess. After a few months, I still have a hard time navigating the website.
I didn’t follow tech news closely, thus was not sure whether some company purchased Facebook. When it happened, it might be another Youtube’s $1B takeover.
Reviewing Blogs and Websites
I’ve been experimenting with doing reviews for websites to see how it compares to my other online money-makers. So far, it has brought me the most money. However, reviewing is good for short-term growth. Selling ads, links and affiliates are hotter over the long run.
Big Progress on PragueBuzz
I’ve finally sat down and seriously working on my travel site about Prague and the Czech Republic; only then I realized how much work needed to be done. I set up this site last September and did almost nothing beside uploading sporadic posts. Geez! What was I kidding? And I wanted to have the one-stop travel and gossip site for Prague.
So for the past two weeks, I’ve busted my butt off to gather materials and fill up PragueBuzz with a lot of useful and cool content. At least for now, PragueBuzz can be considered a real travel guide. Phew!
Monetize – Not only that, I discovered and implemented a new monetizing source and number of super-relevant affiliate products provided by Viator. I promoted and wrote about this company before but have not found it to be useful until a few days ago. Plus, they have a really nice travel blog.
More meat – PB is nowhere near completion. I need to add more basic information, sightseeing guides and tips (the meat) instead of draining up all my brain power on adding the sizzle and the spice, aka. non important stuffs.
Recruit the first writer – I put an ad on Craigslist seeking writers and bloggers who want to contribute to the site. Two replied. One, a beer buff, has sent me four interesting articles.
Promotion – I just submitted PB to b5media to get more exposure. I think my chance is okay since there are not many blogs in the Travel channel.
That’s it for now. Back to work on PB.
Tags: PragueBuzz, Prague, Travel Blog, Travel Guide
99 Cows, Meat for Thought
If you feel you have run out every ounce of creativity and consider ‘conformity’.
Read 99 cows. It’s free, light and quick to read.
Here are some of Seth’s remarkable cows.
1. Matrix clothing – abbyshot.com. The clothes surely look cool.
2. Tivo – TV recording device
3. Rock-star students- oddballs who don’t get high scores and titles in school’s government body and clubs.
4. Tony Robbins – self-help guru, teach people to walk on hot coals.
5. Julius Meil Café – Vienna-style café in New York
6. Canadian donut expert – The man who knows Timbits.
7. Data Insurance – livevault.com. Remotely back up your computer and keep it until you need it.
8. Netflix – DVD rental services.
9. Being Malkovich – a film about–well–being Malkovich
10. David Winer – behind Scripting News. His ideas contributed to the invention of blogging.
And many more cows you can milk from their uniqueness. [download 99 cows ]
Film #2: New Year Baby
USA (2006)/74 min
One Christmas Day, my parents called a family meeting. They sat down my brother, two older sisters and me – to reveal secrets after 25 years. My mother told us that my two sisters aren’t actually my sisters. They are the children of my mother’s sister, orphaned when their parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge. We learned my older brother isn’t actually my full brother. He is my half brother – the surviving child from her first family. My mother’s first husband and daughter died in the genocide.
Socheata, the film director, recalled a fateful family meeting which changed her life. Upon hearing the shocking news, she determined to investigate the past, to seek an understanding her family’s secret and to discover her root, even the horrors it might entailed. Her parents, the half-brother and Socheata made a trip to Cambodia so she could learn more about her native land and especially make some sense about the stime during the Khmer Rouge regime.
The film does a great job of balancing personal interviews, the author’s narration and animation sequences. Yes you read it correctly. Through out New Year Baby, animations are used to portray past events which I find very effective as it enables the audience (especially visual types) to quickly grab the essence of the story. The film director or producer of the American animation Tarzan once said that they chose animation technique because they found it impossible for human actors to perform and express certain actions and emotions. Later I found out that the primary use of animation was that photos and video footages of the Khmer Rouge were not available.
New Year Baby is an excellent documentary. It’s not so much a film about genocide but about family, about Cambodia’s people and a patch in its history. Also the film showed a human side of the people who used to work with the Khmer Rouge, forcing you to question your concept of “the enemy.” See the movie trailer . (3 min 13 sec)
For more information, visit www.newyearbaby.net.
Let’s Leave Together
I watched a documentary about crimes in Brazil last week with a high expectation that I would learn more about current situation. The film seemed to be promising at first but turned into a sleep inducer. I couldn’t see some of the sub-titles because apparently the film producer/distributor thought that white texts would look great on a white/yellow background. I dozed off for a few minutes and wanted to leave but soon decided to stick out to the end for two reasons: no matter how boring, this film would provide me some tidbits of facts about Brazil. While slouching on my seat, I wondered if anybody shared the same sentiment. But everybody appeared to be focused on the movie.
Then it happened. One guy got of his seat and left. Bravo to this initiative man! Within less than a minute, a second person followed. Then a group of three and four joined the deserters. This abandonment took place for about 20 minutes before the movie theater regained the calmness.
I found it interesting. I bet many in the audience thought about leaving, but none took the initiative and left. The mini exodus only took place after the act of the first man. I also noticed that most of the people who walked out were sitting on the back seats where they could see those who left before. Almost everybody who was in front stayed until the end of the movie.
I wondered why?
- Maybe these front-rowers liked the film.
- They didn’t want to look too conspicuous to others by leaving. People tend not to do some thing if all eyes are on them.
- Or they never saw the people who left, thus not affected by this herding behavior.
Testing Partial-Feed
Starting from the beginning of March, I will test publishing only partial feed on one of my blogs (not this one) to see if the number of page views and visit change. The other Internetters have been debating about full-feed/partial-feed for awhile, so I want to see if some of the claims apply to my blog. For example:
->Full-feed: More feed subscribers but fewer page views and visits as people just read from their feed readers.
->Partial-feed: More page views and visits because the readers have to go the site to read the posts (if they want). However, this technique might discourages subscribers and even lower the page views if the post titles are not attention-grabbing. People are lazy, so they might not bother to click on the link to go to the site all and eventually stop reading => lower page views anyway.
The test will run the test for a month.
Film #1: The Operation/ Zatah
Production: Germany (2007)
Scope: Bashkortostan, Russia
Category: Human Rights
Length: 42 min
When Alyosh went to have a smoke outside a club in December 2006, he could not have imagined that he would be beaten up and taken away to spend the night in a police cell. He was not alone – the night ended in a similar manner for at least 347 other inhabitants of Blagoveshensk, a city in Bashkortostan, which is an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation. They were victims of a preventive raid ordered by the Ministry of the Interior. The official reason for this operation was to reduce crime in the city. But Ludmila Alexeyeva, from Moscow’s Helsinki Committee, sees it differently: at the time of the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine, the authorities in Russia were allegedly afraid of unrest in its autonomous republics. Consequently, they attempted to nip any possible civil disobedience in the bud.
This film caught my attentions for two reasons:
- I didn’t know there was an autonomous region other than Chechnya in Russia.
- I’ve developed an interest in political, economical development and people’s attitude and behaviors in post-Communist European countries.
Although Russian politics is nothing news, seeing it up close in action is priceless and ironically funny. When asked by the film crew for his opinion about the raid and people’s reaction, he commented: “…History will say whether it is wrong or right.” After months of refusing to answer to the victims and considering their claims, the police finally admitted that there were some mistakes and decided to take action. Teach the police about Human Rights. The scene which portrayed the lesson is by far is the most funniest (sadly). I couldn’t suppress my laughter as I thought I was watching an elementary classroom in my native country.
Teacher: (speaking very slowly and spelling out words.) You can not hit them ….it violates human rights.
Police: (huh facial expression)
Teacher: (slowly) Do you understand?
Police: What are human rights?
Teacher: Human rights are …
Police: (huh and take notes)
The victims filed a law suit against and received many threats from the government. Many of their neighbors and co-workers turned a blind eye because they fear for their own security: losing their pensions, jobs, flats…
So happen next? You probably know. [link ]
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