Any Other Ebay Users?

As I bring my blog to an end I was just wondering if Professor Lei, or anyone else who has read my blog, has used Ebay for anything?

Reflection

I will be completely honest...I am dissapointed in my semester. I am very upset that this semester had to coincide with the football season and the 100+ hour work weeks that come with it. I was not able to keep up my blog or my reading of other's blogs throughout the semester and I really felt like I missed a lot when I went back to read previous posts.
This was the second online class that I have taken and this one was much more interactive then the previous one. We had to blog in our previous class but it was basically a progress report and didnt involve much interaction so I will be honest in saying that I hated blogs. I struggled through my initial blog on web-conferencing due to the fact that I was very unfamiliar with the idea and didn't see how it related to anything that I was involved with in my life. It wasn't until late in the semester that I realized that it could definitely have a place in college football. If properly used it could save programs a lot of money. I really enjoyed my blogging on Ebay. It is something that I am very familiar with and something that I feel very passionate about. I enjoyed the short discussion with Amber about her fears of online purchasing and I hope that my link could be helpful to hear and maybe even lead her to use ebay.
The only thing that I would change about this semester and my blogging experience would be to have moved it to the Spring time when my schedule is more forgiving. Thank you all involved in my blog for your patience and I hope that my delayed blogs were not too much of a hastle.
Have a good holiday season
Curt

Web-Conferencing & Recruiting

After my last post about web-conferencing and wanting to use it over Christmas vacation to save everyone a trip back to work, I began to think about Web-Conferencing's long term potential as a useful tool in football recruiting. During the months of May and December football coaches are allowed to travel all over the country to visit potential student athletes and their families. This travel puts a lot of stress on the coaches due to the fact that they constantly have to call and check in with individuals in the office. It also gets difficult for everyone on the staff to be on the same page with the recruiting of individuals. If we could get web-conferencing involved then it would be very easy for staff members to log onto a computer and share documents as well as pertintent information regarding personal, athletic, and academic information about the student-athletes. This would be much more cost effective than spending the money to fly everyone back on weekends to have meetings. It would also take a lot of stress off of the coaches because it would cut out one of the many trips a week that they are required to take.

How to Use eBay (And Not Get Ripped Off) | eHow.com

How to Use eBay (And Not Get Ripped Off) | eHow.com

Response to Amber

Amber,
I definitely understand your skepticism with Ebay, especially with really expensive items. I found a web-site that has some tips if you are at all interested. This site speaks about how to safely purchase items on Ebay. I hope that it helps ease your mind and maybe even entice you into making a purchase. (Wow I sound like an Ebay spokesman!) lol...I dont mean to be!
http://www.ehow.com/how-to_4845331_use-ebay-not-ripped-off.html

Christmas with Ebay!

Well I am proud to say that I did over half of my Christmas shopping on Ebay! After doing the math in comparing the items regularly priced to the price I bought them for on ebay, I figured out that I saved over 120$. I must say that I am quite proud of myself! :)I have spent enough time on Ebay to have a select group of sellers that I always buy from. They have developed their own "Store" on Ebay and a lot of their merchandise are items that family members wanted for Christmas. The "Buy It Now" feature that Ebay has developed over the past couple of years has really made the site more "user-friendly". I was able to do most of my shopping in a two hour time frame without having to wait around for the auctions to end. This simple "Buy It Now" feature has definitely increased my use of the site and I feel that it is much safer due to the fact that most "store" owners use it. Many of these individuals have 100% positive feedback with over 1,000 sales. My schedule doesn't allow me to get out and shop till I drop at the malls so I felt that this was my best bet.
Merry Christmas to you all!

Web-Conferencing Could have saved money!!!!

One of these days I will be high enough on the totem pole for some of my ideas to be heard. Our entire staff was going to go on an extended vacation over Christmas break. We were supposed to get from the 18th of December to January 3rd off until it was decided that we needed to have a meeting on the 28th & 29th of December, this meeting of course cut right through the heart of our vacation. This will be a very costly meeting due to the fact that people live away from Syracuse and were planning on going back home for vacation. They now will be buying two round trip plane tickets as opposed to the one that they could have gotten by with originally. Once I heard of the idea to have this meeting I immediately spoke up about the idea of having a web-conference. All of the staff members are provided with a laptop computer that is compatible with all of the necessary programs and all individuals would have no problems getting to a place with an internet connection. I thought that it would be a good idea to have a staff web-conference where all of the necessary documents could be shared and important issues discussed. Unfortunately the higher powers thought that it would be too difficult for some of the older staff members to use. Unfortunately I was fighting a losing battle. I will definitely look into the idea of using web-conferencing as I move up the rungs of the staff ladder.

Ebay's Impact

Since its creation in 1995 Ebay has now become the premiere online marketplace. It is currently available in 43 different countries. For those who use Ebay it is safe to say that it makes certain aspects of their lives much more convenient. When I look at Ebay in my own life, I find that most of my wardrobe and electronics have come because of Ebay purchases and a good portion of my extra spending money has resulted from Ebay sales. As a football coach, between the months of August and December I find it difficult to find time to even do laundry, let alone take a trip to the mall. With a small budget and and even smaller ammount of free time, Ebay has become the best option for me to purchase clothing. I guess because I have been using Ebay for so long I have learned to overlook some of the many worries that newer users have. I was blogging this week in search of feedback from any readers. Do you use ebay? If so what kind of purchases do you make, or items do you sell? If you do not use Ebay, why don't you?

Selling on Ebay

There are 2 main groups that use the ebay website, those who are looking to buy, and those who are looking to sell. In my 8+ years of using ebay, I have done both. In order to do either one of these actions on the website you must first register with the site. Just like any other site that you register for you will be required to provide Ebay with name, address, telephone number etc, along with a username that you will use to identify yourself. This username will carry with it all of your transaction history and pertinent information to potential buyers and sellers.
When selling on ebay, the three most important factors are pictures of the item(s), an in depth-honest description of the item, and positive feedback. The necessity of the picture is somewhat self-explanatory. Very few people would be willing to buy anything in life without first having seen it before. This is expecially important on Ebay due to the fact that many of the first time buyers are hesitant about the authenticity of the Ebay process as a whole.
The in depth and honest description of the item goes hand in hand with the picture. The better you can describe the item the more comfortable the seller will be placing a bid on that item. The final important piece of the selling process is having positive feedback associated with your username. After selling items and getting items to buyers on time, the buyers are responsible for providing feedback about you as a seller. If you continue to provide a good service to buyers than your positive feedback points will add up and you will be recognized as a trusted seller, making people more likely to choose your product over one from another buyer.

EBay Introduction

Though most people may already know about Ebay I feel that it is important to provide a little background information on one of the internet's most productive businesses. Ebay is quick to point out its succes on the main page of their website:
"With more than 88 million active users globally, eBay is the world's largest online marketplace, where practically anyone can buy and sell practically anything. Founded in 1995, eBay connects a diverse and passionate community of individual buyers and sellers, as well as small businesses. Their collective impact on e-commerce is staggering: In 2008, the total worth of goods sold on eBay was $60 billion -- $2,000 every second."(http://www.ebayinc.com/who)
Though this self-promotion may seem boastful, it is very difficult to argue with the facts!
Ebay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995. Omidyar, a San Diego native, orginially planned on creating a marketplace for individuals in which they could buy/sell goods and services amongst eachother. The company really took off when it formed partnerships with big named companies such as GM & Disney and the value of the products being sold increased dramatically.

In upcoming blogs I will discuss the auctioning process as well as some of the positives and negatives associated with this online marketplace.

Webconferencing Continued

The football season is coming to an end so I was finally able to steal some time to get back to my blog on Web-Conferencing as well as begin a new one on Ebay.
Web-Conferencing is beginning to grow on me as I see the cost of travel continually increasing. From an economic standpoint it becomes quite obvious how much money this technology can save. Rather than having multiple branches of the same company travel long distances to meet, those branches can now do the same thing by simply logging onto a web-site. The same presentations that would have been made in person can now be made through the various forms of media supported by these Web-Conferencing sites. In this blog I have included an advertisement for WebConference.com, one of the top Web-Conferece providers. In this video they provide an overview of web-conferencing and how it can be tailored to each individual's or business' needs.

Web Conferencing Web-Sites

For my second blog on web conferencing I chose to research one of the top sites that offers this service:
GoToMeeting.com: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/?Portal=www.gotomeeting.com
This site offers Online "Meetings" of up to 15 people, or it can even accomodate up to 1,000 people in what is called a "Webinar". The website describes itself in this way,
"GoToMeeting is a Web conferencing tool that allows you to meet online rather than in a conference room. It’s the easiest and most cost-effective way to organize and attend online meetings. Patented technology enables co-workers, customers and prospects to view any application running on your PC in real time. With the flexibility to meet in person or online, you’ll be able to do more and travel less." (GoToMeeting.com 10/29/09)
This website not only connects groups of people it enables them share documents, broadcast live via web-cam and use interactive technology so that discussion leaders can effectivle instruct the individuals even though they are not physically with them.
You can use this product for 49.00$ a month or there is an anual fee of 468$ that is more cost effective for businesses that forsee themselves using this product often.

Web Conferencing- My First Look

My blog about Web-Conferencing, as you all may know, is very long overdue but I am going to do my best to catch up. In an effort to do so I will be blogging quite frequently throughout the upcoming days. Thank you all for your patience.


As an introduction to Web Conferencing I first went and just did a simple Google search. After clicking on some links I settled on Wikipedia to provide me a simple starting point definition of the topic...
"Web conferencing is used to conduct live meetings, training, or presentations via the Internet. In a web conference, each participant sits at his or her own computer and is connected to other participants via the internet" (Wikipedia, 10-22-09)
Though the topic itself seems pretty self-explanitory the advances in technology have dramatically increased the effectiveness of Web-Conferencing in the past few years.
Web-Conferences use a variety of media and computer applications that allow the users to have increased interaction as well as giving the teacher/discussion leader the authority necessery to get their points across.

First Blog

I just created this website and this is my first time ever using a blog. I will be updating this in early February when my first class summary is due. I hope all is well.