Buona Sera from Italy

Ciao! Come va?

Today is my fourth day in Italy and my first day on the mainland.  I spent a few days in Sicily for my cousin's wedding and now I'm slowly making my way back to civilization.  I've yet to do any work shopping, since there's really not much selection in Sicily, but the one store I stepped into in Agrigento was very, very promising.

While I have access to a computer I wanted to let you guys know something very exciting happened to me this week.  Lisa, one of my clients and the author of a great blog called Fantabulously Frugal, wrote a post about her experience working with me.  Needless to say I'm thrilled to bits Lisa had a good buying experience and I wanted to thank her for writing about me by referring you guys to her blog.  Please, while I'm away and not writing very much, visit Fantabulously Frugal and show Lisa lots of love!!

In other news, I'm going to the outlets on Monday, so if you hang around here then I might be able to do a mini virtual sample sale, if they'll let me take pictures of the merchandise.  More on that as my plans evolve.

Arrivederci!

This Blog is a Marketing Ploy and Other Platitudes

So, I've been working on my marketing strategy, and I gotta tell you I'm getting pretty discouraged. I need to drive more traffic to my blog AND to my items, I can't continue to rely on eBay's rules about listing visibility. They force me to take risks with the price of my items that I don't want to take.

I've tried a few marketing tactics since I started my eBay venture, and I have to tell you, I haven't really found anything that works well for me. I made the collage above to put in a flyer I'm going to be posting around my building. Unfortunately, I tried putting the flyer up on a bulletin board in the mail room but the management took it down. Facebook works to a certain extent, but the people who like me on Facebook are mostly friends and family, most of whom would never buy anything off eBay and many of them who have never set foot on this blog (some of them don't even know what a blog is!).  Twitter is completely useless and I get more and more frustrated with it every day.  I swear to God, tweeting is like talking to yourself.  No matter how much you support people there by retweeting their posts and engaging with them rarely, if EVER, do they return the favor, and few people respond to my tweets, so what's the use?

And then there's this blog.  Now, strictly speaking this isn't a marketing tool, or at least that's not its intended purpose. However, more than one of you has probably peeked at my items after reading one of my posts.  Funnily enough, I've gotten more reverse traffic (eBay to blog) than eBay traffic from this, which means that rather that a means for exposing people to my products, it's been a means of exposing my buyers to my business philosophy.  However, the thing I've discovered about blogging is that there is a lot of etiquette and frankly, a lot of bullshit that I have no energy or patience for.

So where does that leave me? I don't know. I really don't.  I think Twitter definitely needs to go, but not before I unfollow a few people just to screw with them (yes, I have a mean streak sometimes, surprise!).  I mean there's nothing that bothers me more than lack of reciprocity.  Facebook will probably stay.

And then there's this blog. I don't want to gradually abandon this blog, like a lukewarm relationship.  If I'm going to quit, I'm going to say good-bye to you guys and quit.  I don't think I'm ready to say good-bye just yet though.

What about you guys?  Do you think it's time for an amicable break-up?

Weird Comment Trouble

Ok, for those of you more experienced with blogging than me, can you please help me with a bloggy problem?

So I came to check my blog dashboard and saw that I had 2 comments to moderate, but when I clicked on the link that said "2 comments" only one was there.  Once I approved the one I could see, the other "ghost comment" had disappeared.

Any idea what could have happened?