Shoestring Theory

The Huffington Post’s FundRace 2008 tool taps into the public records of campaign finance to let anyone find out who contributes to presidential candidates. You can search by name, location, occupation or employer. A company as large as eBay is bound to have employees with a variety of political opinions, so I wouldn’t take the following numbers as any kind of indication about eBay as a business, but it’s still some fascinating data. Of course, I can waste hours with a tool like this.

Just a couple of other notes before we get to the numbers. All of the information in this database is self-reported, so it can take a little work to track down a list like this. As an example, the searches [ebay], [eBay, Inc.] and [eBay Inc] all created different lists of donors because of how people list their employer. I tried a variety of search terms, but this still may not be a complete list.

Summary of total contributions to Democrats:

• Barack Obama – $17,705
• Hillary Clinton – $12,100
• John Edwards – $2,100
• Bill Richardson – $250
• Total: $32,155

Summary of total contributions to Republicans:

• Mitt Romney – $13,730
• John McCain – $535
• Total: $14,265

Below, you’ll find a list of individual contributions. They are ranked based on amount given. The persons job title follows their name and is what was listed in the public record.

[Click to read more →]

Tags:   eBay · fundrace · fundrace 2008 · politics · presidential elections · primary1 Comment

Editor’s note: For Sale is a regular feature highlighting what the auction traffic is like on eBay in relation to particular events.

During Valentine’s Day parties as a kid, I remember getting little handmade cards with those hard heart candies glued/stuck to them. We all got those, right? But for the life of me, I can’t remember what we used to glue the candies to the cards. Was there some groovy, edible glue we had to do that with, or were we all just slapping some Elmer’s down and calling it good? Maybe we weren’t supposed to eat the candy glued to the cards. But I did. Surely that doesn’t happen now, or else Fox News would be running some expose about kids across the country getting deathly ill due to glue consumption. Parents thrown in jail for abuse, schools closed by lawsuits, and the complete and utter collapse of the entire hard heart candy business in America. All because of a little glue. Thank goodness things have changed.

If that didn’t warm your heart, we’ll put one more nail in the romantic coffin with some throughts from Brian Alexander at MSNBC on those romantic myths we all hold so dear.

The truth, though, is that while knights may have sworn vows of chaste love to their ladies, in real life they often went around raping the village girls.

Now, on to the stats:

• 28,153 active listings feature the term Valentine.
• 133,656 completed (sold and unsold) listings featuring the term Valentine.

And for that special woman in your life that hates men, buy her this pig.

As always, any links to eBay items will eventually die when eBay removes them from its servers. Any statistics may change within just a couple of hours.

Tags:   For Sale · Valentine's Day1 Comment

Jonathan Coulton rocks. Period. This is a fact, not an exclamatory statement. No exclamation point needed. Coulton did the closing credits song for Portal, which might be the best video game song ever. He did some guest bits on the show with zefrank. You should check him out at his site. I won’t even seriously try to describe his stuff, just think of a singer/ songwriter/ guitar player who has some serious geek/nerd cred. You can download a bunch of his music for free if you want to listen before you buy. You must listen to Re: Your Brains.

Anyway, the point of this post is while bumping around on his site today, I noticed he uses Eventful to track interest in cities he might play. So you should totally click the above widget and demand that Mr. Coulton travel to Lawrence (or Kansas City) to play a gig. I want to see him live, and so do you. Even if you don’t know it yet.

Tags:   eventful · Jonathan Coulton · music · offtopicNo Comments.

Apparently, lots of people reported that PayPal massively under-delivered January’s money market dividend payment. The correct dividends started to be deposited in the last few days. I had missed this until I saw it mentioned in passing in a CNN story last night. Full disclosure, I do have a PayPal money market account. But, I didn’t keep much money in PayPal during January, so I expected (and received) a very small dividend payment.

Mulitple threads in the eBay forums, one at Slickdeals, and another at the Auctionbytes forum can provide in-depth discussion on the issue.

This ties directly back into yesterday’s post regarding eBay’s glitches. eBay keeps hammering sellers with the message that they must help restore buyer trust in the marketplace. But, eBay and its subsidiaries undermine that message (and general trust in the company) each time a problem develops and they don’t effectively communicate with their members. Money market account holders should have been notified of the problem when it was discovered. Instead, hundreds (or more) had to contact PayPal and pester them until they received an explanation for the incorrect dividend.

To eBay and PayPal: Help build trust. Be forthright with your members.

Tags:   eBay · PayPal · trustNo Comments.

The two glitches I reported on last week have been resolved, according to the Systems Announcement page at eBay.

It’s disturbing that no mass message was sent out to eBay users (or if it was, no one I know received it). This glitch could cost sellers customers, sales and money because of the appearance of ignoring customer questions or problems. Worse, it appears some messages may still be missing:

We are working quickly to recover any messages that were not delivered while troubleshooting the issues that delayed the delivery of these emails.

Not all eBay members, particularly those who aren’t regularly active, know to check the announcements page. eBay must communicate these types of problems to the community in a fast and efficient manner. In the earlier announcement about the lowering of listing fees for media categories, Lorrie Norrington, President of eBay Global Marketplace Operations, insisted:

If buyer trust in the marketplace is not improving as intended within the next six months, we will take action.

eBay can help improve trust by ensuring all members know when eBay’s system has problems. Be honest and be consistent. Member trust can grow from there.

Tags:   eBay · glitchNo Comments.

eBay announced today that they will cut listing fees further in several media categories, which will include books, music, movies and video game software.

$0.01 – 0.99 (auction-style only)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .20
[Previously announced fee: $0.15 -ed]
New Media fee: $ .10

$1.00 – 9.99 (auction-style and fixed price)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .40
[Previously announced fee: $0.35 -ed]
New Media fee: $ .25

$10.00 – 24.99 (auction-style and fixed price)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .60
[Previously announced fee: $0.55 -ed]
New Media fee: $ .35

The big guide to all the changes has been updated to reflect these changes.

My guess is that with the new pricing model, Amazon suddenly got a whole lot more attractive financially in these categories. You know, it’s not like the good folks at Amazon are experts at selling books, movies, music or games. Amazon already charges different fees based on the type of item you people sell. Will eBay become the new Amazon who was the new eBay not so long ago?

eBay also made sure to stress that it intends on carrying through with the other changes as announced, specifically mentioning feedback and the PowerSeller rewards program.

Tags:   eBay · fee changes · feesNo Comments.

From Daniel Keys Moran’s blog:

There’s more than one right way to perform most tasks … but there are an infinite number of ways to perform a task incorrectly.

Customer image from Amazon.com.

DKM is a programmer and science fiction author. While Moran was talking about programming and writing in this post, the principle certainly seems to apply just anything (including running a small business). I’ve never read any of Moran’s work, but was given Emerald Eyes last night, which I’m really looking forward to reading. For those who are curious about his work, much of it is available for free in pdf and rtf form.

Thanks Casey!

Tags:   definitions · infinite method · Moran1 Comment

Alt.def will provide alternative definitions to phrases previously defined by Shoestring Theory.

The Shoestring Theory: the theory that most businesses and projects can be launched on a shoestring budget and still succeed. Usually used with the definite article “the”.

Contrast with “shoestring theory” as used with the indefinite article “a”.

The shoestring theory has guided every project or business I’ve ever launched, mostly because I’ve had very few (or no) resources when starting any new venture. Several ideas died quickly, a few lingered on for a little while and one has succeeded. In the ones that failed, either the goals were poorly defined or my interest in pursuing them waned over time. None of them died from lack of money.

Tags:   definitions · shoestring theoryNo Comments.

Learn more about this project

I mentioned Scratch earlier today. Here’s my first project: a simple eBay Final Value Fee calculator. You can use your keyboard’s number pad or the calculator to enter a sale price of an eBay item. Choose a Final Value Fee option and see the current FVF for an item versus the new FVF starting on Feb. 20. Hit the C key on the calculator to reset the sale price.

Everyone should go download Scratch and play with it. I had a ton of fun building this. You can download thousands of user-made Scratch programs from the site to see how they were built or use one as a frame for your own work, so it’s pretty easy to get going. I used a simple calculator program to build this one.

There is one glitch in it. On my computer, the fee automatically rounds to the nearest hundredth, but once it was hosted on Scratch’s site, it just keeps going. I would assume the client everyone downloads is slightly different from what runs on their servers, but that’s just a guess.

I really want to make something else now, too much fun.

Tags:   eBay · fee calculator · scratchNo Comments.

Got a couple of glitch reports. I seem to only be getting about 70 percent of the messages sent from or through eBay properly forwarded to my email account lately. This includes questions and messages from buyers. I’ve got a report from one other seller that his messages also aren’t coming through correctly.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this with the eBay messaging system. It seems to get this way for a week or so, then will go back to working correctly for several weeks or months. Proper message forwarding is one of the services sellers expect from eBay for the billions of dollars we send them a year. If a buyer needs to contact me because of a problem and that message doesn’t get properly delivered, that buyer could easily believe that I am ignoring the situation, resulting in negative feedback or a chargeback that was completely unnecessary. So, for awhile at least, check your My Messages folder in eBay to make sure you’re not missing anything. I’ve submitted a report on this, but haven’t got a reply yet. I’ll update if I do get one.

You can also file a shipping error under glitches for this week. From the Systems Announcements page:

Some sellers are reporting that their items are showing “Free” shipping costs in search results when they did not add free shipping. The correct shipping costs appear on the actual listing and in checkout; only search is showing the costs incorrectly.

We realize how confusing this may be to buyers and are working to correct this situation as soon as possible.

This is another example of eBay’s glitches possibly causing lost business or negative feedback for sellers because of the confusion it creates.

Glitches happen, no doubt. But at a time when eBay is beating sellers over the head with the message that they have to improve their service, maybe eBay should head its own advice.

Tags:   eBay · glitch1 Comment