Shoestring Theory

Kraft Brown Paper from Uline (photo from uline.com)

Hi folks, been awhile since I posted (how much of a blogger cliché is that?). For one, the business this summer has been going really well and I haven’t had the time during the day to write anything. For two, I came to the realization that I spend all day thinking about eBay and e-biz and didn’t necessarily want to be thinking about it more in the evenings once I’m done working. I’m still going to write about eBay, but I think this blog will begin mixing things up a bit also.

Anyway, we were looking at some more shipping options this week and I ran some basic calculations on packing materials to see what our best solutions were. I couldn’t find a good guide on cost per volume, so I figured it up myself. We typically use peanuts and bubble wrap. As of this week, we added newsprint. We have a wide range of products, ranging from very fragile to almost indestructible. We started using newsprint for those items which we know won’t be hurt during shipping. We buy peanuts and bubble wrap from our local UPS Store. I have found that most UPS Stores that they will sell you the industrial size packing supplies they order for themselves if you ask. The managers get to set the prices on large packing supplies, so you may find some variance on how much they charge you. There are cheaper options, but not if you have to have them shipped to a residential address. We buy rolls of newsprint from Uline. The breakdown in cost is as follows:

Bubble Wrap – ½” bubble, 24” wide x 250’ long
$60 for approx 14 cubic feet
Cost per cubic foot: $4.92

Packing Peanuts - white Styrofoam
$30 for approx 11 cubic feet
Cost per cubic foot: $2.70

Newsprint - 24”x1695’ roll at 30 lb weight paper
$45.89 for approx 41.5 cubic feet if packing things very well.
Cost per cubic foot: $1.08

Kraft Brown Paper - 24”x1200’ roll at 30 lb weight paper
$36.30 for approx 29.4 cubic feet if packing things very well
Cost per cubic foot: $1.23

Clearly, newsprint is the cheapest void fill option, but also the least secure. We’re going to stick with this combination for now, using the packing material that is best suited to the object being shipped. If you can buy in larger quantities or at cheaper prices, the cost per cubic foot will obviously drop. Still, this guide should give you a good idea of the ratio in price to volume for these common packing supplies.

Tags:   newsprint · packages · packing peanuts · shipping · supplies · uline · void fill1 Comment

Among all the changes happening to eBay worldwide, one of the most startling announcements has been that eBay Australia will require that PayPal be used for virtually all transactions in Australia (except for items picked up locally).

eBay Australia is hosting several Q&A meetings with eBay users to discuss the new policy. According to APCmag.com, an eBay executive dropped this gem on the crowd when asked why sellers couldn’t offer choices to their buyers:

We’re not allowing people to offer unsafe choices, just like in this democracy you can’t go out and buy heroin on the streets. - Simon Smith, Regional VP for eBay Australia

Classy.

Tags:   Australia · eBay · heroin · PayPal2 Comments

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (photo from nobelprize.org)

There exist certain cues throughout my day that kick off the urge to smoke. Some activities are SO heavily associated with smoking that it’s hard to imagine one without the other (morning coffee). Smokers are but one of Pavlov’s dogs. If I want to quit smoking, there are certain aspects of my life I must reclaim. I must learn how to enjoy them smoke-free.

• Eating
• Drinking coffee
• Drinking alcohol
• Talking on the telephone
• Reading
• Writing
• Driving
• Gaming
• Sex
• Going Outside (really, I’m serious)
• Playing pool

I will try to fill out some explanations for each of these, particularly so those of you who are non-smokers may understand why they kick off the urge to smoke.

One of Pavlov’s Dogs (photo from Wikimedia Commons by Robert Lawton)

Tags:   bells · pavlov · quitting · smoking1 Comment

Screen capture of eBay home page.

Today’s 10 cent list fee special is sponsored by Monster. So, apparently eBay is encouraging you to look for a job on Monster. I guess that makes sense if eBay’s news policies are driving you off the site. This seems like a really odd marketing partnership for a site that has long billed itself as a way to escape having a normal job.

Tags:   eBay · job · list fees · monsterNo Comments.

Okay, so today has by far been the worst, though also the most successful for quitting smoking. By the end of our workday, I’ve had three cigarettes. I also haven’t been able to focus on anything for longer than ten minutes. I’m not cranky or jittery, I just can’t concentrate.

This was a somewhat out of the blue decision to try and quit again. I like to sneak up on my addictions and subdue them when they aren’t expecting it…a kind of addiction ninja. Well, and I tend to be pretty spontaneous about making decisions anyway. What got me seriously thinking about quitting again though was a post over at DS Fanboy (a gaming blog focused on Nintendo’s portable gaming system). One of their readers, Dan, quit smoking using the game Pokemon. Whenever he got the urge to smoke, he’d just start up his DS and play some Pokemon for a bit. And all those news shows say that video games are bad. I’m not using Dan’s plan exactly, but I did spend a lot of time gaming over the weekend. It keeps my hands and mind busy. Dan hunted little adorable monsters, and I’ve been hunting a little bigger game: Dracula!

Tags:   cigarettes · Marlboro · Nintendo DS · Pokemon · quitting · smokingNo Comments.

Photo by SuperFantastic on Flickr (Creative Commons license).

I hated that my parents smoked when I was a kid, especially my mom. Sometimes I took one or two cigarettes out of her pack and threw them away. Once I poured a can of soda into an entire carton, which really wasn’t a very effective way of getting rid of her smokes, as they were wrapped in a protective sheath of cellophane. So mom just ended up with really sticky packs of cigarettes for awhile.

My brother and I always bought those cigarette loads at the Fourth of July. He liked playing practical jokes. I had another agenda. I can still hear mom’s voice…”What would happen if I was driving and one of those damn things went off in my face? I could have an accident,” she would say, carefully inspecting the next cigarette before lighting it. As a kid, I couldn’t explain that her being afraid of smoking was the entire point. No, I didn’t want her to have an accident, but I did want her to think twice every time she lit up.

The walls of our house were yellow. Not by intention either. In the kitchen, we had one of those big ugly wall phones, the size of high school text book. It was canary yellow and had a chalk board built into it so you could leave messages for people. No one ever did. It was hollow so you could store phone books and other assorted phone necessities inside it to have them easy at hand. We finally got rid of it about the time I was hitting high school. Mom had bought a set of refurbished cordless phones from the Home Shopping Network (“Jim, we’ve only got 38 left and this deal ends in 93 seconds, Call Now!”). When we pulled the canary yellow behemoth off the wall, we discovered a perfect white square of wallpaper. The phone had protected the wall behind it from mom and dad’s smoke. All around, the wallpaper had been turned into the same tar yellow color of used cigarette filters. Every wall in the house was like that, we just hadn’t realized it. Mom put a calendar in front of it. Kittens, puppies, horses, Scenic Sites of America. On the odd day that I would pull the calendar up to show someone what our walls looked like, Mom would snap at me. It embarrassed her.

I remember seeing an anti-smoking commercial on television that seemed so brilliant. It was just a little pocket timer. You entered in how many cigarettes per day you smoked on average. The timer would break up your day and sound a little alarm to let you know when you could smoke (something like this). Every few days, the timer subtracted a cigarette from your day, slightly lengthening your time between cigarettes. Gradually, you were weaned off them until one day, you didn’t need any at all. Brilliant, my ten-year-old brain thought. That’s so easy. As a kid, I couldn’t understand what addiction actually meant. That cravings didn’t come hourly. That there are dozens of little Pavlovian cues throughout the day that make smokers reach for their pack and lighter.

Now I do. I’ve been smoking for 14 years. Ug, that hurts to even admit. A few weeks ago, Mom told me she quit. I’m proud of her. And I want to quit too. Now I have a step-daughter, who hates that her parents smoke…and the cycle repeats.

I’m trying the timer trick I thought was so brilliant as a child, even though I know its flaws now. Today, I’m setting my phone alarm to go off every hour and 30 minutes. Yesterday, I smoked 10 cigarettes. A half a pack. Normally, I smoke a pack a day. It’s a start.

Tags:   cigarettes · Marlboro · quitting · smoking2 Comments

File under bizarre. We went to Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Museum on March 22 (traveling for Easter weekend). On the top floor is the Unmuseum, a child themed, interactive display to entertain the kiddies (and the very young at heart, which happened to include our entire party).

The gem of the Unmuseum was Speed’s Place, a video art installation featuring a small room with an old movie projector and a bunch of antiques scattered about to create the feeling of some old timer’s work room (created by Michael C. McMillen). The projector played a fascinating video loop, but seemed odd installed in the kid’s floor of a museum. The video featured footage from World War II, old movie clips, skulls, distorted, horrifying faces and short, enigmatic quotes between scenes.

Speed’s Place (pic by thetheorist).

One asked:

“Why does the working man die for corporate gain?” Ed Note - That isn’t a perfect quote, it went by before I could write it down and didn’t repeat again while I was sitting there watching it.

A trailer for the installation at lalouver.com, had this saying between scenes:

“I dreamed I had a three-way in Cincinnati.”

The entire installation was more horror movie than museum. The charm of the piece, for me, was finding such a dark and surreal piece of art on the kid’s floor of a museum. It was like finding a secret room in a strange house (which is how it was designed to feel). I wondered if the museum folk just couldn’t figure out where else to put it.

I just can’t imagine the logic behind the placement of this piece. Hmmm, let’s see:

Images of the dead, check.
Anti-capitalism messages, check.
Creepy images of distored faces and insects, check.
Sexual innuendos, check.

Let’s put it in the kid’s museum!

Most kids (especially the smaller ones) would probably wander straight out of this room after glancing at the projector and the junk, while only somebody obsessed with the bizarre would actually sit down and be captivated by it. It strikes me as a piece just waiting for controversy when some prude discovers some of its more disturbing elements and throws a hissy-fit to museum management. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. It appeals to my naturally subversive nature.

Tags:   art · Cincinatti · Michael C. McMillen · offtopic · Unmuseum · vacationNo Comments.

One of two North Carolina Championship shirts being offered by CBS.

This is completely off-topic, but as a loyal Jayhawk I have to point it out. Patrick over at Fortuna Faveat has posted that the CBS Sports Store is selling North Carolina 2008 Men’s Basketball Championship shirts (I’m sure this link will go dead soon) before this weekend’s Final Four games have even been played. Thanks for the vote of confidence CBS!

The pic above is of a second NC championship shirt that even shows the bracket on the back.

Tags:   basketball · funny · Jayhawk · KU · North Carolina · offtopic · sportsNo Comments.

Tip of the Day: Take some time off

Sorry for the long delay between postings. We took a few days off over Easter weekend to visit family in Cincinnati. Since then, we’ve been getting the business ramped back up to full speed.

This is a good lesson for those of you thinking about becoming self employed. Taking a break is a good thing. Sure, you get no vacation time, no sick time. If you take a few days off work, the income for those days is likely gone (or less than it normally would be). You may miss out on some sales or some opportunities. That’s okay. There will be more. This was the first time we’ve taken anything resembling a vacation for about three years (minus one wedding). We waited too long and it was high time for a break.

One of the reasons I originally started a home based business was flexibility. I had returned to school, suddenly had a family to worry about and needed a lot of flexibility in my schedule to balance everything. Working at home created a ton of room in my schedule on a day-to-day basis. That flexibility broke down though when we started talking about taking several days off. I felt chained to my house or desk a lot of the time. Sure I could take a few hours off whenever to go to the littletheorist’s activities or run into Kansas City for something. The thought of going days without making sales, contacting my customers, or buying new inventory almost paralyzed me though. It’s like the entire house of cards could collapse if I didn’t have my eye on it all the time. This was not a healthy way to do business, and I knew it. It wasn’t even true. The business was fine and healthy and growing at a nice clip. My own insecurities and fears were just popping up.

The ladytheorist has really been working on me to relax and take time off every week. For a long time, I worked 7 days a week, usually 10 or more hours a day. I had to when I was in school. But, things are a little more relaxed now. First, I started taking Sunday’s off. The business kept growing, perhaps even more than before. Now, we only work a half-day on Saturday. Our customer base didn’t revolt because I wasn’t answering their emails at 4:30 on a lovely Saturday afternoon. We’ve got our weekday hours balanced out so the evenings are free for the family (though I’m still prone to do some work after the girls have gone to bed). Forcing myself to take time off also forced me to streamline the time I spent working, so I was more productive.

I still check my email more than I probably should, even when I’m not supposed to be working, but the reply sometimes waits until the next morning. So, do yourself a favor and plan some time off into your schedule. Even if it seems like that time doesn’t exist, you’ll find out that taking a break makes you and your business healthier in the end.

Tags:   break · easter · time off · tip · TotD · vacationNo Comments.

The Register is reporting that:

eBay is dropping ValueClick’s Commission Junction as the manager of the affiliate programs for eBay’s auctions and Half.com sites. Monday’s announcement came as the Federal Trade Commission announced ValueClick would pay a record $2.9m to settle charges it engaged deceptive advertising and failed to secure sensitive customer data.

About 100,000 eBay and Half.com affiliates will be required to migrate away from ValueClick’s Commission Junction by May 1. ValueClick has managed the affiliate programs since 2001. For now, eBay will continue to use Commission Junction to manage programs for properties including StubHub, ProStores, eBay Stores and Tradera AB, but it left the door open to drop ValueClick on those sites as well.

To state the obvious, this does not bode well for ValueClick. You can read eBay’s official press release for more details. The program, eBay Partner Network, will launch on April 1.

Tags:   affliate · Commission Junction · eBay · ValueClick1 Comment