Ebay No Listing Fees for a Month

Posted on August 31st, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing.

If you wanted to try them out for selling your stuff, now till September 30th is the time to do it.

The “catch” is that you have to buy the Gallery feature to get the free listing and have the start price at $9.99 or less.

However, in my opinion, when selling a product, Gallery is an essential purchase. You also still have to pay a Final Value fee and you’re going to likely want to have the Gallery picture option, but still, free listing is nice.

They are also doing a 25% discount on listing fees if you want your starting bid to be $10 or higher as well.

I use eBay mainly to try to get my stuff in front of new customers so to me I look at it as a marketing endeavor as well as a way to sell off extra inventory I have.

Some more details:

When is it?
Starting Wednesday August 29, 2007 between 00:00:01 PT (12:00 AM plus one second on August 29, 2007) and ending on Sunday September 30, 2007 at 23:59:59 PT(11:59 PM plus 59 seconds).

Can I use Reserve?
Yes you can use Reserve with your listings. However, if your start price is under $10 and your reserve price is $10 or more, you will receive 25% off your insertion fee.

Full details.

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My Top 3 Choices for Affordable Web Hosting

Posted on August 16th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Showcased Posts, Website Tips, General Business.

I’ve had a website of one sort or the other since the early 90’s. In the course of that time I’ve personally used both free and paid hosts as well as used others on behalf of clients.

So just a few weeks ago, my all time favorite web host was taken over by another company and things started going downhill fast. So fast that I had to authorize an emergency switch to a backup hosting site when they kept one of my shops down for nearly an entire day. I thought to myself, “Boy am I glad we had a back up to go to!”

So on that note, I’m making this post about not just my web host of choice, but 2 others as well, in case you want to have your own back up hosting service.

The criteria I have used to pick these hosts:

  1. Features. Good storage and bandwidth. MySQL database. Ability to run cgi scripts. Ruby on Rails a plus. “One click” installs of popular applications also a plus. All the basics included (webmail, ftp, etc).
  2. Price.
  3. Reputation and Reliability. Downtime, customer service, etc.

So on to the hosts:

3rd Place: 1&1

I hosted with them for awhile when they gave me free hosting for 2 years. No problems with downtime. Good features, not so intuitive interface but still nice. I nearly kept hosting with them since their plan was still priced nicely but though my programmer liked them well enough, I just couldn’t get used to their interface.

2nd Place: Lunar Pages

I have not personally used them but have friends who have been using them for years. They have a great price for the features they offer and though they have had some problems, they seem to have been minimal.

1st Place: Dream Host

This is my present primary host. Their services and prices are nearly identical to Lunar Pages, but they beat them out if you can find a promo code. Since I officially moved over to them I have had some network slowness with them and one hour of actual down time but my friends who have been with them for years say this is very unusual. I’m sticking it out partly because the price was so cheap but also because I like their interface, the control the web developer has, and their customer service. I have been thinking of opening an account with Lunar Pages to act as a back up host though.
So there you go. My top 3 choices.

If you’d like to sign up with Dream Host yourself, here are some promo codes:
“DOMAINAND20OFFYR” - Get one extra free domain name and $20 off of the L1 year plan.
“20OFFYR”- Get $20 off the Yearly L1 plan.

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Instant Domain Search Tool

Posted on July 9th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, Website Tips.

While you can go to many places to see if a domain is taken or not, this tool is fast and shows you the domain status instantly as you type it. The other bonus is that your searches are kept private. This is an important factor because some domain registrar companies have been accused of grabbing domains folks have searched for, in which one person is just testing out searches, decides to sleep on it and then comes back to find out the domains were bought.

Handy when you’re trying to find a name for your latest website.

Instant Domain Search

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Free Anonymous Phone Number Service

Posted on June 23rd, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Offline Promotion, General Business.

What a neat application. Initially invented for use on Craigslist, numbr provides a free number that will forward to the phone number of your choice. The additional options surprised me. For instance:

  • You can pick a number from a selection of US cities
  • If your number is unavailable you can enable voice mail messages to be emailed to you
  • You can set it to not disturb you between 9pm and 8am in the US time zone of your choice
  • You can enable Call Screening which requires the caller to leave a short message which you will hear before taking the call
  • Your number will automatically expire in set increments of your choice (1 day to 1 month) but if you need your number beyond 1 month you can renew your number for free or if you want to expire it early you can do that too.

There aren’t even all of the features.
Aside from just using for personal online security purposes, this could be handy for fun store promotions, or maybe a contest of sorts.

Photo from flickr user sophistikittenlin

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Online Sales Lose Steam - New York Times

Posted on June 17th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: General Business.

Online Sales Lose Steam - New York Times

Article about the decreased growth rate of internet sales. Brick and Mortar stores have responded to internet sales by making their stores more appealing.

Thanks to the tip off on the article by NormalBrains from the CP Forums.

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Countries My Shirts Have Visited

Posted on June 3rd, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: General Business.

This tool, which draws on the Google APi, is supposed to be used to show the countries you’ve visited. I decided to show some of my sales report data on it instead.

I only ran a few random Decembers worth of sales, it was too time consuming to look them all up and I couldn’t bring up the report for my entire history because the server complained. I looked up unknown codes (I had to look up MO — which is Macao for instance) by using the Country Code tool.

It was a pretty fun excercise seeing where else in the world someone was also into some of my obscure interests. Next time I’m feeling down I’ll come back and revisit the map to cheer me up (and maybe update it, but we’ll see).

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

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Quick Country Code Lookup Tool

Posted on June 1st, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, General Business.

Made the boyfriend code this country code tool for me (he also wanted to try out Ruby on Rails). I’ve got the most popular country codes memorized but when something new comes up it’s fun to find out what new country will have a citizen sporting one of my shirts :)

There are already lists of country codes out there but this tool lets you just plug in the 2 digit code and hit return (or the “Go!” button on the page ) to find your answer.

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Music Video Maker Automatically Sets Pics to the Beat

Posted on May 8th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing.

So, as is my wont, I was checking out the latest web2.0 sites and found fliptrack which lets you make a slide show from pictures. Yeah, nothing new. But they provide music to go with it. Still not new. And, it is automatically set up to play your pics to the beat. Ok that’s new.

What else is new is that the site has gone through the trouble of dealing with licensing issues so you can legally share these videos on MySpace, Blogger, etc.

I made a quick video to test them out. I used their desktop application (you can do it all online too). The interface was decent, especially for a free program. You could actually create your own timing just by clicking and dragging frames though I stayed with their suggestions for the most part. They had the option of using effects as well so yes, you too can do a star shaped transition effect ;) Unfortunately for Mac-only folks they only have a Windows version right now so you’ll have to do it all online.

Though I was tempted to use the “Scooby Doo” theme (and maybe I still will later), I chose the song “Too Sexy” for the fun, cheese factor. The concert pics are ones I took during SOE’s FanFaire in Atlanta last year. Good times. Url link to video: http://www.fliptrack.com/watch/QDLl85LBzq

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The End of a 1,400-Year-Old Business

Posted on April 25th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: General Business.

What entrepreneurs starting family businesses can learn from the demise of Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi

The world’s oldest continuously operating family business ended its impressive run last year. Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi, in operation under the founders’ descendants since 578, succumbed to excess debt and an unfavorable business climate in 2006.

How do you make a family business last for 14 centuries? Kongo Gumi’s case suggests that it’s a good idea to operate in a stable industry. Few industries could be less flighty than Buddhist temple construction. The belief system has survived for thousands of years and has many millions of adherents. With this firm foundation, Kongo had survived some tumultuous times, notably the 19th century Meiji restoration when it lost government subsidies and began building commercial buildings for the first time. But temple construction had until recently been a reliable mainstay, contributing 80% of Kongo Gumi’s $67.6 million in 2004 revenues.

Can you imagine? The article continues on the website.
From BusinessWeek.

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Photoshop “Real Steel” Tutorial

Posted on April 20th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Design.

So I was making a graphic that I wanted to feature a steel fridge in, and came across this tutorial. It’s a great step by step tutorial so I thought I’d share it.


Link.
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