eBay's Troubled Affiliate Program

Well, I hate the thought of provoking an ebay revolt - for my modest amount of traffic, I am getting a few sales (nothing like what I did with CJ.)

However, those who are actively promoting the ebay affiliate program by ppc, etc, who have contributed to ebay success in the past and who know their stats like the back of their hand - they are the core of eBay traffic now. eBay is saving itself an absolute fortune in google advertising. Just think - how many times when you made a search for a product a year ago did eBay advertising pop up - quite often in the top three google results. How often does that happen now?

.... I hope that eBay is paying attention to the problems that the affiliates are reporting. If it was just one rogue complaint and everyone else was happy, I could believe there isn't a problem. However, on the net, people make a living promoting products. If eBay affiliate program stops paying out well, then affiliates are going to replace this lost income by promoting something else. .....

M

ps... I also belong to other affiliate programs where the merchants (eg eBay) get absolutely slated if they put third-party advertising on their site. The argument is that the merchants are effectively stealing from their affiliates by earning money on traffic sent to them and not passing on any reward.

Gallows Humor

The apocryphal story of the condemned man being led into the execution chamber. The condemned prisoner points to the electric chair and asks the prison warden:

"Are you quite sure this thing's safe?"

From William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1:

Mercutio is stabbed in a swordfight by Tybalt, Juliet's cousin:

Romeo: "Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much."
Mercutio: "No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man."

As Sir Thomas More climbed a rickety scaffold where he would be executed, he said to his executioner:

I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me safe up; and for my coming down, let me shift for myself.

Immediately after the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence, but before the wars that secured independence, Benjamin Franklin is known to have said the following in danger of being accused of high treason to his fellow, often fractious delegates:

We must all hang together or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

After her career had declined and she had started aging, actress Tallulah Bankhead would answer the question "Are you Tallulah Bankhead?" with

No, darling, I'm what's left of her.

Author and playwright Oscar Wilde was destitute and living in a cheap boarding house when he found himself on his deathbed. There are variations on what the sentence exactly was, but his reputed last words were

My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death; one or the other of us has got to go.

Perhaps one of the best examples of gallows humour in recent times is the conclusion to Monty Python's Life of Brian, in which a group of crucified criminals joyfully sings "Always look on the bright side of life".

Spotted recently in Largs

Horse pucky!

I love signposts!

Grand Theft Auto IV

You know you're becoming a sedate, stuffy old fool when you can't understand the excitement about the latest release of Grand Theft Auto IV - and that probably describes me! But, thinking back to my youth and childhood (quite a feat, I can assure you, LOL), I know that I would have given my eye teeth to have the latest gadgets and gizmos. We grew up at a time when the consumer boom was just about to break loose and, although we were comfortable, our farming lifestyle meant that cash was needed to improve the business rather than to buy the latest "must have" - in those days, transistor radios and record players.

Mind you, there was always a point at which my folks gave in and bought into the new technology - and we always had wee Saturday jobs of one kind or another to earn the extra cash to buy things for ourselves. .... Where there's a will, there's a way!

For those of you buying the Grand Theft Auto game today - enjoy!

Medical Transcription, eBay and Life in General!

What a day. I had it all planned out to perfection. Silly me!

My plan was to set up a small blog about training to be a medical transcription secretary - I used to work in a hospital and for the first few weeks was completely at sea when it came to the medical terminology. So, it makes great sense to me to take a dedicated training course to learn the ins and outs of the business. .... and that's just in the UK. Knowing that other countries have many layers of requirements for medical and insurance claims, I suspect that getting a good training in the business of medical secretarial work is absolutely essential.

Have I written this blog yet?? Well no - because I then got involved in my sister's problems with eBay. Not a problem, really, because she successfully bought a kitchen
- and needed to pay for it. That's when she ran into the PayPal obstacle course. It's just that the paypal monthly/annual payment limited were exceeded by the amount she paid for the kitchen - so she instantly had to learn about getting her paypal account verified. It's all done now, but boy did it take some effort. Why so - well, clever as she is, my sister gets excited and flustered when hitting a problem like this; her recourse is to phone me and get me to talk her through the process. Fine, not a problem, I'm keen to help. It just takes time!

Anyway, we're making progress and all I have to do now is get my life on track :) - bake some cookies (Empire Biscuits, if you really want to know!), write another blog post, take a picture of the beautiful cherry blossom in Helensburgh - oh, and I should really put on a washing, hang up a washing - and more!

ps, thanks to http://www.sxc.hu for the image .... great site with some amazing pics.

Exceeding expectations

I just bought something from eBay - and decided to pay for regular delivery instead of opting for a more expensive solution. Imagine my delight when the parcel arrived within 24 hours of paying for the goods.

What a great example of fantastic customer service - my hats off to them.

From now on, I am redoubling my efforts to exceed expectations.

M

ps - I don't know what my expectations are from the new site Qassia - I was made aware of it recently on a forum and decided that good backlinks to my sites were well worth having. I have yet to update my profile page and I only have a little time to review articles. If you are more dedicated than me, you can probably get much more out of it than I have. Best wishes.
M

Old sewing patterns

For entertainment, I sometimes surf around craigslist to see what’s on offer and, occasionally, to find out what people are searching for. I did the latter today, had a look to see what was wanted.

How shocked was I to spot that someone was looking for old sewing patterns from the 60s. (My era!) Now, all I gotta do is head into the old boxes and see if I have any left. Who would have thought that someone would be looking for miniskirts and split skirt patterns. Amazing. I did find some - and let the person know, but I’m still slightly bemused by it all.

Still, it goes to show that you can use all sorts of web sites to do research.

M

This is one of the most watched sewing machine auctions on eBay