Snowflakes

Brrrrr, it's been so cold outside. And this morning we have a sprinkling of snow. Everything feels colorless, black and white, hushed and empty.

My big Ebay sale went pretty well last week. I sold almost everything I put up. I did not make much money for all that effort though. The cost to ship some of them were more than the actual sale price. And the time spent after the sale was huge too - to send invoices to the winners, keep checking back for payment, boxing it all up according to cheapest shipping charges, printing postage and labels, leaving feedback, countless emails back and forth. Then the fees. So many fees. Insertion fees, commission fees, percentages to Paypal, percentages to Ebay, upgrading my account at Paypal, more fees. Ugh. Obviously, it's a lot tougher to make money at this than people think. And a whole lot of work.

I'll do a bit more next month. I've got more stuff to get rid of. I'm taking a short break the first week of February, and there isn't time to do another auction between now and then. Especially because folks take their time to pay up, and then you're waiting around for days to ship them all off. This is not an instant gratification, cash in your pocket, endeavor. At least in my experience. I'm a total newbie, for sure, but I think I have a pretty good system already in place with all the mail order I do. Yet it still required endless time at the keyboard. Learning a new skill, I guess.

The spring mailing is going out February 9. It's about a week later than I usually do it. As I mentioned, I'm taking a short break, a few days off, and it doesn't make sense to send out a newsletter and then run. It's all really early anyway for spring flowers and thoughts of gardens coming back to life. It can certainly wait a week.

I've made a few changes to the website in the meantime. New header and new colors. A few of the latest updates to the calendar, though nothing shows up until April. It's going to be a slow start to the year as far as shows. But I've got plenty planned for this year. Lots of applications went out, and notifications won't arrive for a bit. There will as many of the usual as I can do, and a few new ones too.

eta: just some grammatical edits. i think i love the word "but" just a little too much. must watch that.