My latest project (or latest insanity)

I have signed up with ProStores, an eBay company, to create my very own online store! This should, in theory, increase my profits by reducing the amount of money I spend on fees. The store costs ~$21 a month to maintain (the first month is free - which you really need because it'll take that long to get the dang thing fully up and running!), and has a fee of 0.5% for finished transactions. That 0.5% is a far cry better than the 10% Final Value Fee an item gets charged at my eBay Store! Also, I'll save the $0.06 per item listing fee every 30 days, which is a big savings when your inventory is over 4000 items! The only question that remains is whether the savings offset the additional $21 per month. We'll see.

Of course, now that I think about it, moving only 350 items over would save me $21 in listing fees per month right there. Wow! This may actually be a much better idea than I originally thought!

So now I am in the process of moving a good deal of inventory over from the eBay store to the new store at http://store02.prostores.com/servlet/donsmagicandsundry/Categories (like how I slipped that plug in?). As an alternate route, you can go there by going to www.donsmagicandsundry.com and clicking on the "Shop" button at the top of any page.

The store has a shopping cart, and I have programmed in my handy shipping tables. So, theoretically, someone should be able to go there and buy already, as I have a few items put into inventory.

In theory, once this is fully up and running, buyers will be able to see my available eBay store items from the ProStores store. And any items that I move from the ProStores store over to the eBay store will send buyers to a shopping cart on the ProStores store when they purchase.

Probably the biggest single decision maker involved in this has been the fact that since ProStores is an eBay company as well, they've integrated things very well with eBay and PayPal. Therefore it's rather simple to import items from eBay over into the ProStores store where I can edit them a bit and make them available.

Of course, this means that I have now a lot more work on my hands - moving and editing inventory over from eBay to ProStores. And I still haven't completely finished processing Lots 5 and 6 yet! I am almost done with Lot 5, though.

AND...as if this weren't enough....I HAVE A NEW JOB!!! Woo-Hoo!!! I am now the project writer for an online science education website (that I don't want to link to from here as they may not appreciate that all that much). I get to work from home, writing lessons on Chemistry, Earth Science, Biology, and more aimed at college undergraduate level students. I set my own schedule, so I can keep the Stores up and running at the same time (and somehow fit in the last two Biotech courses this semester - OI!).

Needless to say (although I will anyway), I am going to be a very busy man over the next couple of months! So don't be too surprised if Blog updates are even fewer and farther between :-(

The Magic of childbirth...

No, no - I've not become a Papa for the third time. But one of my customers has for the second.

I was having a pleasant email "conversation" with a potential customer from the UK, when suddenly his last message ended with: "Oh dear! My wife's bag of water just went!!! She's having a the baby now!!! Chat with you later my friend!!!"

Well, yes, I suppose that discussions of Magic cards should take a second seat to the birth of your child.

This happened back on Dec. 30, and I wasn't sure if I'd hear back from him or not. Lo and behold, today I get an email with pictures of the newborn! I tell you, I love my customers! The best in the world. So cool!

In other news: I got a 4.0 in my Biotech classes (yeah!), I'm one of two finalists for a Staff Writer position that I really really hope I'll get, almost all of the Rares & Uncommons from Lots 5 and 6 are finally up in the Store (leaving a couple thousand commons still to go...), and sales have been pretty steady at the Store. So, all is pretty well as we head into the new year.

So, with that, I'll leave you with a Happy New Year - all the best to you all from The Sundry!

The commission is complete!

This past Sunday the last three cards from Alan's commissioned items sold and were paid for, completing the job I signed on for. His grand total take for the commissioned items was slightly more than he was shooting for, which makes him very happy I am sure!

In other news, I continue to peck away at Lot 5 and Lot 6. I have given up hope of getting them up for the big Holiday season - especially since Hanukkah is already here and Christmas is less than a week away.

There has been a marked increase in Comic Book sales over the last couple of days, which has been refreshing. Hopefully that will continue for the next week at least.

I spent almost all of this past Sunday getting my Magic Abilities page updated. As I was taking photos for the Champions of Kamigawa common cards, I noticed several abilities that I hadn't previously recorded (notably "Bushido", "Ninjutsu" and "Splice"). I then looked forward at the next several sets and discovered that at least one new ability was added in every set! I then found a handy Rules compendium on the web that summed up the various abilities, and led me to several more in older sets that I hadn't yet added.

Basically, the abilities page about doubled in size when I was all done!

I've not yet received any comments on the Abilities page from users. I've started including links to it in item descriptions (if you check out the Eater of Days card you'll see links to Flying and Trample). Hopefully that will increase traffic to the website and prove a useful reference to people.

Well, that's all for now. Off to process more photos and try to get more cards added to the Store!

Quick update

Just a quick update as I'm tired and overdue for bed...

The rest of "Lot 6" arrived and has been sorted out. Now I can get back to adding inventory to the Store. The latest large addition was the common cards in the Mirrodin expansion.

The new website is taking shape. I'm particularly proud of the Magic Abilities pages I came up with. I hope it will be of use to customers. Ultimately I want to make it so that a potential customer could click at the end of the definition of, say for example, "Flying" and be taken to my Store with a search for all cards with "Flying" in the description. I owe major thanks to my wife is is acting webmaster for the site. The design is hers - I just write some of the content!

I may have a regular customer! A gentleman in Pennsylvania (hello, Chad!) made a $100+ order last week, and says if he likes what he gets, he may be back on a weekly basis! He's actually already put together the next order. Wow!

Okay - perhaps more tomorrow when I have more than three functioning brain cells...