My new service costs £100 and is about 4 to 6 hours work. What I do is get the store owner to go choose an image at istockphoto (for the header) then I work on getting a colour scheme together. A few changes to the stylesheet, maybe remove a column, make some changes to infoboxes, add some jquery stuff, shorten the checkout procedure, add some SEO useful stuff and that is job done.

It's quite surprising just how good an osCommerce site can look for a few hours solid work. I think that people have got bored of the standard stuff from Template Monster - why pay $150 or more for something that is outdated and that possibly hundreds of other shops use.

With my new service, no two shops will be the same! Can't be bad. Anyway, not an advert, but if you see anyone running a crappy looking osC shop, feel free to give them my email address

Hello from Amazon.com.

We're writing about the order you placed on August 29 2008 (Order# removed). Unfortunately, we are unable to ship the item(s) as soon as we expected and need to provide you with a new estimate of when the item(s) may be delivered:

removed [Mass Market Paperback]
Estimated arrival date: 10/22/2008 - 12/15/2008

If there are other items in your order, they'll be shipped according to the delivery estimates listed in the order details in "Your Account" (www.amazon.com/your-account).

If you still want us to ship the items when they do become available (though they may arrive later than expected) please visit this address to approve the delay:

http://removed

If you do not approve this delay by October 16 2008, we will cancel the item. However, if the item becomes available before that date, we will automatically ship it to you.

By approving the new delivery estimate, you are letting us know that you still want the item(s) though they may arrive later than expected. If there are other items in your order, they will ship according to the delivery estimates listed in the order details in "Your Account" (http://www.amazon.com/your-account).

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this delay.

So it took 18 days for them to realise that what I ordered is not in stock, even though it was instock when I ordered. Great. Had I been able to use the amazon.com vouchers at amazon.co.uk, this situation would not have arisen as I would have ordered other stuff anyway, rather than be FORCED to order paperfuckingback books.

Seems to me that Amazon Customer Services need to apply common sense. Thank you & Fuck you Amazon.

LTR and myself decided to seperate - which is a good thing as the relationship was stale beyond belief. I bought myself (well, mortgaged to the hilt) an apartment in an old house, whch also has 3 other apartments. The other people are just great, it's fantastic to finally find a place that I am completely at home in and comfortable with the whole situation. Upstairs my neighbour is brilliant. If you can imagine the campest man possible and then multiply that by 10 you might be close to how camp this guy is. We get on like a house on fire.

Downstairs is a hot blonde which is nice, I know that me and she are going to have a LOT of fun in the future, that is for sure. I'll let you know how it goes, maybe

The guy in the bottom apartment is just "normal", a 9 to 5 type guy which is fine. Nice guy, but on a completely different plane of existance to what I am used to so that's something that I need to get used to. All in all, a great bunch - the house is a happy place - three of us just polished off a few bottles of wine which was a lot of fun.

In business terms, I'm still in the process of dumping my sites - basically I am uninterested in the vast majority of my sites, so I am mainly deleting the sites and letting the domains lapse - no interest in most things internet. What I am interested in, is going back to e-commerce type stuff, and helping people to realise their e-comm dreams - getting some good satisfaction from that at the moment.

That's your update from osWorld…as I have not posted in weeks, I thought I better let you all know I'm not dead, yet

On the odd occasion, nonUK clients don't want to use Paypal - which is fair enough.  In this instance I have an Amazon Wishlist which serves as a payment method - in 4 years only 1 person has ever used it as far as I recall.

Anyway, a few days ago someone else wanted to use it - but instead they purchased me a Gift Certificate so that I could spend it at Amazon as I wished.  Great, you say, and great I say!

However, did you know that Gift Certificates purchased at amazon.com cannot be used at any other amazon site (eg .co.uk, .de etc).  And Gift Certificates bought at .co.uk or .de cannot be used at .com.  WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT!

So, basically, as I am in the UK, I have an unusable Gift Certificate as Amazon refuse to simply exchange my.com Certificate for a .co.uk certificate.

I was looking at one particular product which is £25 (about $50) on Amazon UK.  Switch to amazon.com and the SAME product is $120 (about £60) - so double the price.  On top of that, I'd have to pay import duty (tax) as well as extra shipping cots…

KISS MY ARSE AMAZON.

How easy would it be for them to simply understand that UK buyers need to buy from their UK site?

I asked the person who bought the Gift Certificate to ask for their money back - again, Amazon won't even do that.  Amazon is worse than useless.

So - I am working on a new design for the actual site. Some of the existing templates will be retained and others (those which look a bit dated) will be nuked. Obviously I need some cool designs to add to the site.

This can be done in two ways;

1. I buy your design from you and do as I wish with it.
or
2. You retain your design and give full selling rights to me. We split the profit on each sale (a bit like how Template Monster works I suppose).

Designs should be free from royalty or other limitation of usage issues - in other words - no stock images etc - the whole design should be of your making.

I would be looking for HTML or CSS designs, or even PSD - anything you have really. As some designs are not useful for the piece of software, I'd be happy to see a jpg of your design before letting you know if it's going to work or not. After this we can then decide how to progress.

In short, this could be a nice way for you to earn an ongoing income, and you will be realising that income from a design that you probably already have collecting dust on your hard drive.

Anyone interested? Please email me on oscshops AT gmail DOT com

Of course I am also very happy to hear from any designers who might like to make brand new designs for me. Get in touch!

I'm contacting you because I've discovered a new way to make money on eBay.

Since they started using "Best Match" (a secret ranking algorithm) I've been researching it – until I managed to manipulate eBay rankings at will.

I've prepared a short video which explains step by step exactly how to have all your auctions appear at the top.

I would be interested in having you publish a review about it on your blog. If you agree to publish a review about it I'll give you free access to the paid video.

Also I'm going to pay 50% commission to affiliates.

You can read the sales letter here: http:// removed

And see the free video here: http:// removed

My promise: This video is absolutely great, it really shows exactly what to do step by step in order to get superb rankings on eBay - Your readers will love it – But don't take my word for it, let me know if you are interested in posting a review and I'll give you free access to the video people are going to pay for so that you can be 100% sure of the quality of the product your readers are going to buy.

To receive the affiliate commissions you need to have a ClickBank account - If you don't you can open one for free at: http:// aff link removed

If you want to participate or have any questions please contact me.

Thank you
Richard

OK, sounds interesting, seeing as I sell a couple things on eBay, and if it works, I don't mind promoting it for nothing (as I don't have and don't want a clickbank account). The best part about the email I think is:

If you agree to publish a review about it I'll give you free access to the paid video.

So, I'm expecting to be able to watch the video, then decide if it's any good, then check it out by amending my ebay listings. And then reporting back my findings. Good!

So I write back:

Richard

I'm interested.

Cheers, Gary

His reply

Hi Gary,

Thank you for your reply and interest.

We can give you access to the paid video ( as promised) after you have published a review in your site.

Please use this keywords with the corresponding URLs in your review:

internet marketing promotion - http:// removed
internet marketing solution - http:// removed
internet marketing promotion - http:// removed
marketing internet
internet marketing affiliate program - http:// removed
marketing internet bussines - http:// removed

Please send us the link to the review you made and we will give give you free access to the paid video.

Thank you and please let us know if you have any concerns with the links.

Regards,
Richard

Oh, so now I get it. I get to watch a pre-sale video (which by the way shows a whole lot of nothing), then I have to write a quality blog post about it (with supplied spammy keywords!), then I get access to the video that I am supposed to be writing a blog post about. Ummmmm.

My reply:

Richard

That would be breaking UK law.

I can't promote something when all I have seen is some video showing how to change from "best match" to "ending soonest" and back again.

So, you get real - and you might get a review. If you want to play silly games, that alone would make a far more interesting blog post than your new "system".

Gary

I'll leave you lot to make up your minds about whether I misunderstood Richards intentions here. For me, I can't promote something that I have not tried, not seen, never used. I never have on this blog, and in fact, recent legislation here in the UK makes this illegal now.

Fscking Internet Marketers - get on my tits.

Since the turn of the year I've been playing more and more with osCommerce and I am enjoying it once again - so that's where I am at.  Coding up scripts, making themes, helping people with their oscommerce sites.

Going forward, I am closing down most of my "make money online" stuff - so I'll have just a few sites left where I am earning moeny for not doing much work.  I might sell a few, I might not.  I might just dump them totally - I'm bored of that whole genre - most of the people involved in "make money online" are complete arseholes who try to make out they are experts when there is no doubt they haven't earned the right to call themselves experienced.

osWorld

Surprisingly, the osWorld blog has continued to make a small amount of money even though there has been no posts for 3 months.  About $100 a month can't be ignored - no great shakes, but for absolutely zero work at all, it's not so bad.

I'm going to try to post 2 or 3 times a week on this blog.  I'm not going to try to be selling anything via this blog - it's going to be an outlet for me, my rants etc.

I'm completely sick and tired of Internet Marketers, Internet Marketing and all the associated bullshit that most so called "marketers" come out with.  What I want to see is people promoting useful products rather than overhyped shite.  There's a few marketers who I think are good guys.

So, I decided to absolutely cut back on selling to people in the "make money online" world - most of whom won't make more than a couple hundred dollars online ever, as they don't understand that it takes hard work to build up an ongoing monthly income.  They want the "silver bullet" and that's something that no-one can provide.

For the rest of 2008

I recently purchased a website that I sold about 3 years ago - my main aim for 2008 is to get this website producing £1000 (that's about $2000) per month averagely.  That'll be quite a challenge, but the signs are looking good that this will be achievable.  To give some idea, the site has been producing about £250 ($500) per month for the last 6 months, I've managed to up that a bit, but have some more ideas to up it even further.

All the other bits and pieces that I own/run are, as of now, basically abandoned - the good thing is that the vast majority are AIS so they don't take an awful lot of work anyway. I'm going to be selling off a number of my products and domains over the coming months so keep an eye on this blog for details.

Thanks to Will for the heads-up as I wouldn't have noticed otherwise - just shows what priority osWorld gets these days.

In Other News

I updated osWorld to WP2.5 - I'm not overly keen on it as I feel it's a step sidewards rather than a step forwards, maybe I'll get used to the new layout in time.

Come May, I'll be hoping to get at least 1 post per day on osWorld - in recent weeks, posting has taken a nosedive due to other projects (both online and offline) getting in the way. It's time to PUMP UP THE VOLUME again

And, lastly, but not leastly, I'm sorry to say that Dave has left osWorld to concentrate on offline ventures - good luck Dave!

I now own the eBooks site again and decide I would like to try eBay as an avenue to get sales.  Easy enough - I'll list my eBook…

On ebay.co.uk

Nope, that won't work as eBay UK don't allow the listing of ANY digital product, even if the seller is the IP/copyright owner and registered with as Vero owner.  From the horses mouth;

Please understand that at present, listing items with digital delivery is not available on the UK site of eBay. In this case, you can list your item on the US site of eBay.

Fair enough - it's no big deal.  Off to .com it is…

On eBay.com

All going swimmingly well - new rules indicate you MUST list any digital item only in the "everything else > information products" category.  From the horses mouth;

Using the Classified Ads format, sellers receive a 30-day ad at a fixed price. This solution enables sellers to continue to market their digital goods on eBay; however, because Classified Ad listings are a lead generation tool and do not result in transactions that go through eBay, Feedback cannot be exchanged between buyer and seller.

Sellers who wish to continue to offer digital goods can do so by selecting the Everything Else>Information Products category in the Sell Your Item form and choosing the Classified Ads format (not auction-style or fixed price).

OK, fair enough - but "everything else > information products" is not a selectable catgeory as it's a parent category.  A few emails back and forth to eBay customer service resulted in them giving answers to lots of questions I never asked and not answering the question I did ask, namely "how to select this category"…

Selecting a category INSIDE "everything else > information products" worked just fine, but when I got right to the end of the Sell Your Item form pages, an error message stated "you are useless, please add your item in "everything else > information products" only" (well, words to that effect anyway).  So back to the drawing board.  I need to find out how to add products to a category that is unselectable…

As I had no help from eBay UK, I decided to try eBay Live Help.  After pointing out the problem, they fixed the whole thing in less than two minutes - I'm not sure what they did and I don't care - I just wanted the listing live!

Anyways, as of right now I have my product listed on eBay. As classified ads last for 30 days, I'll probably need to go through this whole debacle again.

I wonder why eBay makes things so difficult for sellers?  To be frank, I don't understand why people listed with their own Vero program cannot list digital items in any way they please - doesn't make much sense to me.  Anyone care to explain why eBay are unable to allow this?

Supposedly the main reason is due to feedback abuse - people buying/selling hundreds of 1p items in order to get feedback ratings quickly.  Here's a couple of ideas for eBay;

• allow digital products priced above (say) £5 to be listed normally.  Who's going to buy a £5 product to increase their feedback?

  OR

• disallow feedback on items less than (say) £5.  If you can't get feedback on cheap items, it can't be abused.

Both these make sense to me - perhaps the price limitation more so than the feedback limitation.  Seems like a crappy kneejerk reaction by eBay UK to disallow vendors based on what they sell