I’m laughing my ass off at this podcast. They all got hella stoned and they’re just being so goofy and I love it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Joe this high. Or maybe I have, and it’s just this company that is influencing Joe to be this goofy version of himself.
Ate dinner and went on a bike ride. I’m doing things backwards today!
I started out the day working on eBay. I got my Twitter all set up and squared away. I found out about TweetDeck and I scheduled a daily twitter post for the upcoming week with an assortment of eBay listing advertisements.
My first giveaway ends this wednesday! I’m stoked to figure out how gleam.io handles choosing a winner.
23 entrants so far! I think most of them are random people with twitter bots that hunt for hyperlinks to gleam.io giveaways. Here’s one such example, a user called, “FoundGiveaways”
But yeah, I’m excited to see if gleam has a randomizer thing that will choose a winner for me, or if I have to do that myself. It’ll be interesting to find out!
I set up ads on my blog today. I got rejected by a bunch of ad networks. Finally I got accepted by infolinks and I immediately got a wonderful link advertising home remedies for toe fungus. The image was of a big toe and what looked like ground garram masala sprinkled all over the toenail. Ah yeah, that’s the stuff!
I added a reminder to my calendar for one month from now. At that time, I want to check back on my infolinks dashboard and see if I make any money having these terrible ads on my site.
The default ad which displayed was a popup like those seen on the lower third of youtube videos. I immediately went into settings and disabled that format because I think it’s incredibly disruptive to readers.
Instead, I set up the in-article ads which flow gracefully into the page content. There’s a weird doubling of those ads right now. I don’t see any way of fixing that unless I manually insert the infolinks code into every single article. Somewhere down the line I can probably figure out how to add the code in bulk.
I figured it out using a widget. I just pasted the infolinks inArticle HTML code into a widget and it’s all better now.
Infolinks seems kinda terrible. We’ll see how it goes!
If people don’t like ads, I’m 100% fine with them running adblock on my site. I’m a huge believer in ad blockers.
I’m also a huge believer in getting paid to entertain, educate, or provide value in some way. I need Open Index Protocol! I think that’s what it’s called. The OIP team has this vision of creating an internet where content creators can make money without needing a middle man such as YouTube or Patreon.
That’s all I really know about OIP. I haven’t looked into the technical deets or anything like that. It’s a nice vision! Who knows if it’s plausible though.
I suppose it’s plausible. Maybe that’s the wrong word. OpenBazaar was plausible, possible even. Did it work? Nope. Too many UX hiccups. Too sluggish, too ugly, too buggy. Not a compelling product at all.
I read something about markets. Even if there is a market that is 100% better than a more popular market, that isn’t enough for mass adoption. Mass adoption happens when that new, better market is 1000% better.
OpenBazaar wasn’t even 10% better that eBay or Amazon, LOL!
I guess my idea of “better” is completely subjective. Better in my case would place usability at priority #1. OpenBazaar wasn’t a webpage like every other market, you actually had to download and install a completely independent program. That right there is a huge failure in usability.
Then there’s the whole Electron thing. Using Electron meant that OpenBazaar was a 110 MB download at a minimum. And it was such a Javascript bohemoth like every popular Single Page App out there. It was slow and sluggish and had glitches.
Grr, I’m so angry about OpenBazaar! I seem to be talking about it once a week week lately. I had such high hopes for OpenBazaar but it failed to deliver time and time again.
Maybe they’ll have a comeback. Maybe in 2 years when this post goes live, I’ll be eating my words because OpenBazaar becomes the #1 selling platform online. LOL what a world that would be!
Could you imagine? A world where OpenBazaar became #1? I think Bitcoin would have to skyrocket to $50,000 a coin. Amazon would have to continue to be as slow and unresponsive as they’ve been during the COVID-19 economic crisis. eBay would have to crash and burn with 80% more HTTP 500 errors than normal.
LOL
It could happen. I doubt it will, but it could happen.
Nice set of stretches here. I like the kicks! Unfortunately I don’t have much room to do a few of them. I have this problem with space while doing many yoga videos. I’ll have to turn 90 degrees on certain poses and face away from the computer. Other poses I have to restrict my reach because I’d either extend my arms into the ceiling or my inventory shelf.
I know TweetDeck has been around for years, but I’ve never really tried it until I started this profile for my eBay shop.
The scheduled tweets are going to be really great for marketing!
Mondays are going to be the day when I draft a daily tweet for the week ahead. Wednesdays or Thursdays are my giveaway days.
I reduced prices on a bunch of items today. I also listed a few new items. I finally got the package that Buyee forwarded to me. It was in transit for 68 days before it finally got to me!
Thanks, COVY!
I don’t wanna blog right now. I wanna Netflix and chill!
Today was great even without the blog. I felt very productive and I think I improved my store quite a bit.
Ok focus time. Gonna write until I get that sweet sweet 2000 words!
I made 3 or 4 listings and I got started in Twitter marketing. I’ve got 23 entries in my Gleam giveaway. This week’s giveaway is probably going to be a Precious Memories card. Eventually I’d like to give away booster packs, but right now I gotta keep the giveaway cost to an absolute minimum.
Postage stamps, envelopes, and cardboard.
Remember how last week I was all depressed about not re-ordering postage long enough in advance? Yeah, that ended up being not a big deal at all. I think I had one booster pack sale which is too thick to use letter pieces, and a day with no orders.
I bought postage at Safeway, but that same day I received both rolls of stamps that I had ordered. LOL what a twist.
Dinner this evening was fantastic. I had seasoned black beans that I had soaked overnight and cooked for 45 minutes. I used a recipe from Anastasia at Kind Earth on YouTube
I didn’t have any fresh onion so I used onion powder.
I didn’t measure the other ingredients and I ended up putting in way too much salt. I did what is probably a travesty in the kitchen– I rinsed the beans after they had been seasoned. I started over!
I wasted the last of my leftover tomato sauce doing that, but the end result was really good. The black beans were perfect mixed in with the other stuff.
The other stuff was 4 steamed red potatos, leftover Costco quinoa salad from my sister, brown rice, and asian … cabbage something. I forget what it’s called. It’s a cabbage side dish popular at … Fuck, I can’t think of words right now. The type of meals where everybody brings a side dish.
Anyway, I got a therapy session tomorrow. I’m not really looking forward to it. I did the homework but I did it so long ago that I don’t even remember. Also I am probably going to have several eBay shipments to take care of in the morning, which means I have to get up extra early in order to make sure it’s all handled before I have the Zoom call.
I’m so happy I have a bicycle now. It’s such a beast of a bike and I don’t think I’ve ever felt that my energy is so efficiently used to propel myself forward. Earlier this evening when I rode around the block (3.34 mi) and it felt like I had expended the same amount of energy as it would take to walk to the end of my driveway.
I exaggerate. Walking down the driveway doesn’t wind me like riding hard on my bicycle does. My point is that it’s incredibly efficient compared to walking, and I’m amazed at how smooth and fast I can go with literally just my own human body power.
Amazing. Unforgettable. Addictive. Really pleased with my bicycle.
I was hoping the rear caliper would stop rubbing on it’s own. Maybe break in a bit from riding. I don’t think that’s going to happen on it’s own at this point. The caliper still rubs. I’m definitely going to want to take it back to the bike shop and see if they will fix it under warranty. Then I’ll probably repeat the process of grocery shopping and chillin’ on park benches while I wait.
My throat is sore. It’s definitely from riding my bicycle. I haven’t breathed as hard as that in several weeks. It seems to be harder breathing than it is when I run. I guess it makes sense. When I run, I don’t run up hills. When I bicycle, I go as fast as I can up them!
Recovery is going to be really important. It’s a strange thing to think about how my main mode of transportation is now a bicycle with a power source that is my own body. It’s not like a car with a 100% duty cycle.
Actually I don’t think 100% is accurate even for cars. Cars get hot and might break down if their duty cycle is that high. IDK how to even calculate duty cycle. Is there a fixed time period for duty cycle? Is it 1 hour? 1 day? 1 week?
Let’s say it’s a 24 hour duty cycle. A car could probably be 100% during one duty cycle if it were well maintained and modern. My body though? I’d be surprised if it were even 12.5%.
12.5% duty cycle would be 3 hours. Ehh, I don’t even know how this duty cycle thing works. I think I could cycle for 6 hours in a day, but I’d need a whole lot of resting periods throughout.
Scratch the duty cycle train of thought. My point is that unlike a car, my human body power source can improve over time. That’s an amazing thing!
My right calf is really sore. I really pushed it last Friday.
Sore throat. Much rest is needed!
11:10PM. I suppose I should head to bed ASAP knowing that I have a 9AM zoom appointment, and about an hour of shipping processes beforehand.
Goddamn, I love my job! I get to ship cards featuring cute anime girls, I get to code websites, I get to invest in things, I get to search for gaps in the market and exploit them, I get to photograph cards and create interesting listings, I get to toot my own horn and TWEET said cute cards to the masses.
I am grateful for this job. I would like this to be my career. It’s something that I’m choosing for myself. I’m making it a reality every time I set an intention and put in the time.
It’s not easy. it’s not a walk in the park. It’s not a passive income type of thing. It’s not a job, it’s my life’s work.
It’s hard. I might fail. I will probably fail, but I won’t give up. I’ll figure out something that works and blaze forward towards the future version of myself that I want to be.
Something I was thinking about while I was scheduling tweets for the week ahead… Marketing is all about trying different things, gauging interest from the target audience’s responses, and repeating the process until something is discovered that has a desired impact.
I think that’s what it’s about, anyway.
I think selling is the same way. I don’t have a flow of new product, so I’m constantly trying to come up with ways to create remixed and rehashed interesting listings using duplicate cards.
I’m trying different ways of repackaging those cards and putting them out there, with the intention of figuring out what excites buyers and entices them into spending money in my shop.
Try. Fail. Revert or Rehash. Succeed!
The nice thing about the bicycle idea is that I don’t have to worry about locking my bicycle when I shop, because my bicycle will be safely at the bike shop.
Random thought.
89. I light the world with my smile.
90. My spirit is beautiful.
91. I make a difference in the world.
I’m grateful for my eBay customers because they keep me going.
I’m grateful for Cherdleys on YouTube because they always make me LOL
I’m grateful for All Gas No Brakes because he highlights some incredibly strange people in a hilarious way.
Excelsior!
