Long Time no Blog

I've been mia on my blog for a while. Well it seems like it to me. Here's what's been going on. I have officially left ebay as my selling place. I still have a membership, just because I don't like to burn bridges...LOL

I opened a store on Wagglepop. Spent a couple of weeks there getting it all set up, and customized to have the right chibitude, but then decided to drop that site. No offense to anyone who sells on Wagglepop, but the merchandise that was offered there wouldn't pull in the kind of bidders that I was looking for.

So, then I went to CDHM (Custom Dolls, Houses and Miniatures) and signed up for a whole years silver membership. This place provided me with a gallery for my work, and is meant to help you market your items. I've been faithfully showing my work on there since I signed up.

Then I signed up for OLA (www.onlineauction.com). I am very happy there so far, and feel like I have found my new home. I made my first OLA sale tonight, and it was different but exciting.

There are quite a few reasons why I like OLA, but I thought I'd share some of them.
1. There is just one flat fee of $8 a month. That includes all your listings, a gallery pic, listing in two categories. There are no final value fees. And I really like that.
2. There are a bunch of different ways you can list your items. You can do a regular auction, like what we're all used to from eBay, and there's another type of auction that I would call a "true" auction. With this type, you don't set a starting bid, you let the bidders do that, and the auction ends when the last 2 people quit fighting over it. I haven't tried this type of auction yet, but I will at some point.
3. They also allow you to advertise in your listings. I REALLY like that a lot. I was really getting fed up with all of ebay's rules. No flashing animation larger than blah blah in your auction. Only links to blah blah blah, and only if it doesn't blah blah blah. So many rules to keep up with, and such a large place, it was so easy to have an enemy that would hunt you down and turn you in for some small little thing you didn't even know about. (Yes, I did get turned in for something)
4. They don't care what you talk about between buyers and sellers. They allow you to make deals outside of the auction site...whatever you want to do.
5. They have this founding member program. Which YES I did do. It costs around $200 to join, but OMG the savings are amazing when you compare what you get with what you were getting with eBay. With the founding member status, you pay $100 to become a founding member, and about $96 to sign up for the yearly plan. With this founding member status, you are guaranteed to never pay more than the $96 for as long as you are a member of OLA.
In the Month of January, I gave eBay and Paypal almost $60.
Take that and multiply it by 12 and you get $720. That's $720 a year that I was giving to eBay
in comparison to the $200 for this year to OLA and the only $96 for all the years to come. I mean the savings just make total sense. My hubby agreed immediately when I explained the plan, and was right on board.
It didn't make any sense to NOT do it. And with all the people who do sign up for this, that means that OLA will have more money to provide more features, advertising, servers etc. So it's a win win situation to me. I'm just really excited because I think I made a really smart choice.
If by any chance you're interested in learning more why I made my choice, you can click here and read what Chris Fain (OLA founder) has to say. Here's more information about the plan itself and the perks that come with it. And if you decide it's right for you, based at all upon anything that you've read here, I'd so appreciate it if you'd use my referral code: 33209AAA when you sign up.

Ok, enough of my excitement about the new site....LOL Let's see, I've also been advertising my stuff on Youtube.com. Which If you've been to my blog before you've probably already seen. I've added to my marketing the introductory videos. And I'm really having a blast seeing the chibis come to life.

I've also downloaded Openoffice.org. And I'm totally thrilled with this software!!! OMG I've created the coolest database that I can use to keep track of all my sales, and fees, and profits etc. I'm attaching a screenshot of one of my records to show you. If you're a seller like me who has information all over the place, I think you'll see the usefulness of this.
Hmmmm.....let me think if there's been anything else going on chibi-wise. Oh yes, for Valentine's day, my sweet Macadoodle let me go shopping, and I purchased some storage and Ott-lites. I want to recommend these lights. They are just wonderful. The color is so pure I don't even have to edit my photos at all after taking them. That's a big big time saver. And I got one that is a desk lamp, and another that is on a moving clip stand, so I can get the perfect lighting any time I need it. Oooooh, I think I have a picture of them too that I can share.
And here is a picture of my newly organized work area with my new storage drawers!!! I'm just in chibi making heaven right now.
One last thing that I wanted to share before I call this gab session quits. I've been using this wonderful scrap booking software to create my ad pictures. It's so nice to have a template that I made, that I can just plop my pictures in, and they all come out the same each time. It's called ScrapbookFlair. And you can visit the website here if you're interested. It's free software and quite versatile.

One last last thing. I found that with leaving eBay, there is a lot more work that I have to do in order to promote myself, and manage my auctions. And what I've done is made a section on my start bar/programs section to guide me through everything I need to do. This past weekend, it took me over 10 hours to list an item. After my organization of my computer with the appropriate shortcuts and help, today it only took me about 2 hours. That's a big big difference. Let me see if I can capture a screenshot so I can show what I mean.
Each one of the shortcuts takes me to the program or website I need to use to complete the task.

I hope that some of my little experiences can give you some ideas on how to make your business end of sculpting easier and maybe even more enjoyable.

Chibitude Level: 10/10 (I feel like I back on top of things....don't feel so bogged down by the unknown and unorganized---Asperger's showing...LOL)