bubbajay.com

Interesting…I just got a Blog comment from “anonymous” on my post below titled “Getting Red Going Green”. I was chastised for not keeping up on my Blog. I’m not sure how to feel…first they’re right – I haven’t kept up on my writing lately. But, second – where is their Blog? Who are they? What right do they have to judge my frequency of writing? Third, I put the Blog out there so should I be judged? Perhaps.

Anyway, here come the excuses…

Times are tough. I’ve been working from home for 5 or 6 years now I think, providing for my family from my various e-commerce endeavours. I started looking for work outside of the online realm, much to my demise. Even worse I found a job. And to top it off, I found another.

So, a month later, I went from working at home full-time to working two jobs for a total of around 70 hours a week for someone else.

I have a background in restaurant management, and fell into position as the Front of the House Manager at a local Irish Pub. The Pub is owned by Matt Hensley – ex-professional skateboarder, and band member of the fairly famous Flogging Molly. It’s a fun, lively atmosphere with live music every night and a young clientele and staff. I enjoy it despite the fact that I don’t drink and am not Irish. I work there approximately 30 hours a week, 4 nights a week.

I was happy to find a job in the evening allowing me to pursue my own businesses in the daytime, still be home when my boys get out of school and so on. But when I got the Pub job, I was just filling is serving, and the hours were less regular and not management, so I kept looking.

Amazingly after a few weeks I found another job doing basically what I’ve been doing myself – at home, though for someone else. The company has more business than I did, and they know more than I do about several areas of web-design and I was excited to learn some new stuff, get paid and still be working with eBay and websites. It was a part-time gig too and I could basically make my own schedule.

Then it all came together…or fell apart – depending on how you look at it. My skills were appreciated at the web design job and they gave me an enormous raise and asked me to work full-time. I accepted and things have been great there.

A few weeks later, the Pub asked me to start managing 3-4 nights a week – a raise was given and now I suddenly have two jobs for 70-hours a week or more. Don’t forget I never quit running my own businesses at home, but they’ve definitely taken a back seat.

So, why haven’t I been Blogging? Maybe I could start a band – Blogging Molly!

So I’ve had my blog for a few months now, so I thought I’d touch on they why and how of it.

Why get a blog? Some people enjoy writing. Some people get good therapy for themselves out of writing about lifes goings on. Others do so strictly for business reasons and others to educate the masses. Google has one, HP, Sony…just about everyone it seems is blogging. Businesses use Blogs to communicate with its customers.

But me…why did I start a Blog?

Well a bit of all of the above. I do enjoy writing, even in my matter of factly style. I wanted to educate anyone willing to read it, on a miriad of subjects that I’ve endured in my pursuit of making a living online. And I too, want to communicate with my regular readers.

Has it worked? Who knows really? You’re reading it right? Why? You may have gotten here via my email signature. It appears this is the way most of my readers find their way here. The first month around 70 visitors total, then 80 the next, thn it dropped off a bit…down to 60. Then this month boom, back up to over 100. Ok, I’m not the New York times, but I have had a few people email me about what an “interesting” blog I have. I’m not sure that means they like it or not, but I’ll take interesting. )

I’m trying to touch on eBay, websites, email marketing, and any other online endeavours I’ve run across. But if you have a topic you want to see my comments on, let me know. Chances are better than not, that I’ve tried it or at least given it some thought.

Feel free to post your comments on any posts you like or dislike too.

Allright it’s cheesey, eBay Jay. But somewhere along the line calling clients and associates started using the nickname to remind themselves of who I was, and I started using it myself to remind them of who I was. You know when you call someone and say “Hi John, it’s Jay” and there’s that long pause…or worse they say “Jay who?”. So I tweaked the greeting Bond style. “Hi John, it’s Jay…eBay Jay”. Inevitably they’d reply “oh yeh, Jay, how are you?”. A longwinded explanation, but I tend to be that – longwinded.

I don’t profess to be a writer persae, but I do have lots of thoughts and I try to get them out as best I can. I’ve been selling on eBay for…sheesh 7 years now. I’ve sold a bit of everything. I run two fulltime Powerseller businesses with my wife and I do work for others on their eBay businesses and websites as well. I may not know everything about eBay (most certainly), but I do know quite a bit about the whole online auction business as well as website design and the business of managing them online. I have 5, errrr 6 websites. Some make money, some don’t, but we’ll get into that later.

So, that’s a bit about me. I’ll get into more later. Welcome.