USEDCARSALESMAN

Usedcarsalesman may "sell out"

Over the next few months, Usedcarsalesman is planning to reconfigure the use of a few of the web addresses he has kept registered since the days when Bill Clinton was still kicking-it in the Oval Office.  

One of those addresses, Usedcarsalesman.com, the address on which this very blog has "sat" since late 2004, may be included in that number.  

Why the possible change?  Well, reality is that "Usedcarsalesman.com" is a web address that might be able to "angle-in" on modest revenue from Google, courtesy of the many used car sales outfits paying to advertise online using Google's Adsense service.  

The address isn't doing this at present and, thus, Usedcarsalesman, himself, could be, in a small way, leaving money-on-the-table with his admittedly peerless opinion blog.  

So, if Usedcarsalesman alters it, how might Usedcarsalesman.com look in the months ahead. Usedcarsalesman suggests that it may incorporate the following two changes, numbered in order of importance:

1. Better serving the used car sales community and the used car buying public utilizing Google AdSense and other keyword-focused, used car related information.  The front page of Usedcarsalesman.com will be reorganized to display Adsense advertising based on the main keywords and keyword phrases that Google-search users enter concerning "used cars."  The main thing is the provision of helpful information concerning the keywords, keyword phrases in question.  Usedcarsalesman sees reason to believe that even Adsense ads are helpful to web searchers if clicking on them increase the searcher's awareness of a given topic more than might have been the case if the Adsense was not present 
2. Usedcarsalesman's blog will live on, it simply won't be "front-and-center" on Usedcarsalesman.com.  A link on the front page will take you to one or more pages containing all past and present Usedcarsalesman posts, as well as posts that Usedcarsalesman will add going forward.  

So, yes, when all is said and done, Usedcarsalesman may, for commercial reasons, be planning to actually start embracing the topic of used car sales on Usedcarsalesman.com, "selling-out" so to speak.   But, fear not -- he has no plans to let this disturb his blog. 

 

Social Networking Sites Are a Friend of Network Gaming

Whether they know it or not, Social Networking sites -- particularly Facebook and Linkedin -- are another thing helping to take Network PC/Console gaming in to the main-stream, particularly to adults over-30 who may not have gamed much previously

Why?

When you are on Facebook and run into old buds who are 3,000 miles away, spur of the moment games of Madden '11 (online) are a lot easier to organize than a real-life rounds of golf!

Usedcarsalesman Looks For Team-Mates To Work With On His New Blogs

Usedcarsalesman has been finding himself taking few "ups" lately -- "ups" in this case referring not to Usedcarsalesman meeting/selling a perspective customer walking on his lot, but the time he takes to post new items to this blog.    

Usedcarsalesman has instead been looking at arranging other blogs from domains he has long held. Thus far, these other blogs include the following:

• Spacemeals.com    "What's On The Menu In Outer Space?" (Space Entrepreneurialism has not quite found much in the way of support from the Feds, large institutional investors or smaller investors in the general public.  About the only supporters it has are a few guys who are very rich -- cats like Paul Allen, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and various Space Tourists such as Dennis Tito and Anousheh Ansari.   But, whether its space meals or space investments or space entrepreneurs, it's ultimately a growth area -- the public just doesn't know it yet)  
• E-Audience.com     "We're Watching It On the Web" (For People -- Like Usedcarsalesman -- who are avid users of legal, advertised/pay-service web video providers such as Hulu or Netflix; a monumental growth area that Usedcarsalesman digs!)
• RemotePilot.com   "If You Can't Lower Heaven, Then Raise Hell" (Aforementioned is the Motto of the 432d Air Expeditionary Wing that allegedly does the UAV driving for the US Air Force;  Blog is On UAVs and their Operators; U.S. Air Force is nearly tripling its current roster of UAV pilots by 2012.  Large orders for the next generation of UAVs have already been placed; This is another monumental growth area that Usedcarsalesman digs!) 
• Personfies.com  "Who Personifies What" (A blog that assigns labels to currently news-worthy public figures, including celebrities, politicians and professional athletes -- basically high-profile people who'd have a hard time suing Usedcarsalesman for libel; It's written for the sake of reader amusement and debate.  Not necessarily a growth area, but then again, do you really expect gossip to go out of style any time soon?)  

 Do you think that is it?   Just 4 new blogs, Usedcarsalesman?

 No, Usedcarsalesman also has another 10 blogs -- ones he's already configured with typepad.com blog software, appropriate affiliate advertisers, personalized domains and his own private outlines for their content focus.  Its just that he has not as yet begun adding content to them unlike the 4 aforementioned sites. (Click through all the domains on the lower right side of the page and you will find the ones with the 10 other blogs Usedcarsalesman is referring to)

Reality is, though, that 1 guy -- even Usedcarsalesman -- doing 1 blog and updating it regularly involves considerable work.  4-5 blogs means off-the-hook work for Usedcarsalesman at a pace that he probably cannot sustain for more than a 6 months before he feels himself compelled to destroy his computer, head to a cabin in Montana and start an end-of-the-world Cult.  And 15 blogs means a month's work with 2 hours sleep a day and then Usedcarsalesman takes an abrupt, stainless-steel-vacation at the LA County Morgue.  

Obviously, Usedcarsalesman would like to stay alive and in LA, so he is going to be looking for people who share his interests to team up with him in the writing of each of his respective new blogs.  Of course, these folks probably aren't going to all be in Los Angeles, but that's ok.  

  
 

Usedcarsalesman Gets Focused. Usedcarsalesman.com Stays Unfocused

Usedcarsalesman is looking at branching out in to more specific areas upon which to write.  But he doesn't plan to do this "branching-out" on the Usedcarsalesman.com blog 

No, he's going to do this "branched-out" writing on blogs associated with a one or more of the domains that you see listed on the left side of this page. Its his plan that his other blog(s) will, unlike Usedcarsalesman.com, have content and corresponding keywords that are specifically related to their respective domain names and blog titles. 

There's a good reason for this:  One of the long-time problems that has be-deviled this blog is that its URL/title, Usedcarsalesman.com, doesn't relate much to the keywords that reflect its content.  

There's no:  "Type Usedcarsalesman.com (or enter Usedcarsalesman as the keyword in your next Google search and find Usedcarsalesman.com on the first results page) to see what Used Cars are currently for sale in lots across North America." 

People type Usedcarsalesman.com and, instead, they get some dude's editorial "bishop-beating" on everything but Used Cars:  Not a "recipe" that really makes things easy or obvious to web-users that might be inclined to read Usedcarsalesman.com if the purpose of the site was more obvious and direct.   

True, Usedcarsalesman himself has well-justified his reasoning for using the Usedcarsalesman.com URL/Title as follows: 

"Yeah, see the Usedcarsalesman.com title is supposed to be funny...The blog is supposedly written by this shady sales character who, contrary to stereotype, likes to give his real beliefs (in writing) to the public for no personal gain ...It's kind of his psychological reprieve from always playing fast-and-loose with the facts at his day-job working on a hypothetical Used Car lot."

(Continued) "So you now see what this Usedcarsalesman blog is all about right? This blog makes sense to you now, right? Wait, why are you typing in ESPN.com in the...?" (The "Usedcarsalesman" Page is overwritten by sports scores and user never returns)   

Maybe if Usedcarsalesman.com was some kind of team-type blog written on the legal profession by a bunch of UCLA or USC law students, that might make a little more sense to readers -- the readers in that case likely being lawyers and law students themselves.   

Heck, what lawyer doesn't remember that line dropped by Demi Moore on the JAG Lawyer played by Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men:  "... *You know nothing about the law. You're a Used-car salesman, Daniel. You're an Ambulance Chaser with a rank. You're Nothing. Live with that."  Taking that approach with Usedcarsalesman.com might be a way to really tighten up the focus of the blog for a specific audience that's smart enough to get the title/gag. 

(*Of course, Usedcarsalesman as the JAG lawyer would reply to Demi:  "Sure sweetheart, but lets see how well "Nothing" pays the bills versus a "Usedcarsalesman" or an "Ambulance-Chaser." He'd also say:  "Our little back and forth here is really turning me on...I bet if we got you out of those navy whites and in a cat suit, you'd make a first-class Dominatrix." 

Anyway Usedcarsalesman is going to begin his "similar domain -similar title -similar keywords -similar content" change-of-strategy by starting a second blog on a trial basis called, spacemeals.com (Also spacemeal.com). 

This blog is going to focus solely on, yes, "space meals":  space food, snacks, freeze dried ice-cream, what NASA astronauts eat, what the Taikonauts and Cosmonauts eat, what's space meals are in the works, and space meal-reviews by the author and perhaps by various younger and older friends. 

You won't see any talk of space stations, science fiction films, area 51 or anything remotely and/or supposedly to do with other space-related topics in spacemeals.com.  Nope, it'll just be "space meals:"  All space meals all the time!  ...Bleh!

But if the new blog saves young parents some time when they are looking for gifts for their budding young family of astronauts, then Usedcarsalesman can handle staying within www.spacemeals.com's  narrow -- for him --focus. 

As for Usedcarsalesman.com, the blog, it looks like it's going to stay as is for a little while longer. 

 

Bird-Dogging for -The Bugle-

Usedcarsalesman has long known he was a generalist, interested, unfortunately, in everything from entertainment to business to politics to world events.  He considers nothing off-limits. 

Perhaps you could even call him more a "writer-as-manager,"  a writer essentially "good-at-nothing:" That is, one who applauded and dined on the specialization of some, while he produced a broader, more political, and cause-and-effect oriented piece.  In fact, maybe you could say he was more the "editor" or "managing editor"-type.

Great, but so what, right?  You're a editor/managing-editor of essentially zip, Usedcarsalesman.  You are still an editorialist or essayist apart from any newspaper or magazine that would draw you readers and give your writing context.  And you obviously don't have name recognition like Mark Cuban to bring people in on your own, there's no consistency to your post topics, you rarely compose pieces that have good search "keywords," and your writing hardly ever provokes comment from the few readers you seem to encounter. 

To add insult to injury, your own name makes you seem less than trustworthy, perhaps suggesting a site to do with "flipping beaters" rather than editorial exposition (go figure :).  Bottom line is that you're in to 4 calendar years with this and you still don't really have any real readership, Usedcarsalesman!

Well, the other day, Usedcarsalesman read an interesting snippet to do with blogging on the walletpop.com blog.  It was written by  forensic accountant, Tracey Coenen (as you probably already knew, "forensic accountants" are the tactical consultants employed by all serious bloggers ;). 

In her piece, Ms. Coenen may have unintentionally answered a question that has been dogging Usedcarsalesman (and maybe a few other bloggers) for many years:  who -- what people -- was he really writing for, besides himself? And correspondingly, where should he devote his efforts at gaining those readers?

Ms. Coenen provided opinion to suggest that Usedcarsalesman (and many other bloggers) were inadvertently ignoring the people most interested in "timely, original and insightful" content on an array of subjects:  Professional journalists and editorialists.    Perhaps this was who Usedcarsalesman was writing for, whether he knew it or not. 

In Usedcarsalesman's case, perhaps it was the journalists and editors of larger publications, themselves, who would actually "get" and benefit from the pieces he wrote.  Maybe this was the font of readership, Usedcarsalesman so long pursued?

Wait, Bloggers attempting an alliance of sorts with main-stream media, you say?  Generating ideas that might shape mainstream journalism, "flushing" hidden concepts in to the light, Bird-Dogging for The Bugle as it were? Egad, man!

What about your, Are Print Publishers Like The Christian Science Monitor Asking For Donations? piece in 2004? What about some of your concepts in Usedcarsalesman's Metroblogging.com Fantasy in 2006? Or those suggested in The State of Blogging, 2007 (Part 1) or The State of Blogging, 2007 (Part 2) in, well, 2007?  You're writing suggests some antagonism towards main-stream, print-publishing, Usedcarsalesman.   

Usedcarsalesman says: "yes and no."  From a business-efficiency and labor stand-point perhaps.  But,  keep in mind, Usedcarsalesman, himself, thankfully doesn't have those aforementioned issues to deal with on a day to day basis. And it is no problem if his readership is composed of people -- your typical journalists and editorialists -- who do have to deal with those issues.

In sum,  Usedcarsalesman now plans to help traditional journalists and editorialists wherever he can, even contacting them to raise their attention to certain of his pieces.  Perhaps that is the way he'll start to grow a readership.

New Profession: "Blog Transfer Specialist"

Usedcarsalesman knows that if you are a white-collar professional who makes his living providing services to clients in financial services, law, accounting, lobbying, insurance, or consulting, that moving your "business" (client-list) to a competitor can often times be a real bitch. 

Let's say you are a financial adviser (modern parlance for "stock broker").  You currently work under the Morgan Stanley umbrella, but you want to move your operation to Smith Barney because the payout there is better, management is more responsive, or they have better taste in commercial office space for sales purposes or other reasons.  Great.  But, of course, this means that you have to corral your, say, 39 Morgan Stanley clients, sell them in writing on the move, get each of them to complete transfer paperwork and hope with enough phone encouragement that they all decide to land with you at Smith Barney.  No mean feat.  As a matter of fact, when a "professional" - broker or otherwise - changes companies, client casualties can often be pretty high if you can't make the case for them to stick with you - "...for the last 4 years you've averaged 25% appreciation a year with me," "Joe, you and I are fraternity brothers," or “Trust me, I'll always tell you that your wife's not a dog" - or you don’t have some help.

What happens if you doing something “New School” and not nearly as established – say "Blogging" - and you want to transfer your operation (archive of editorials) to another web publishing service?   Sure, with Blogging, you think you’ve removed the inefficiencies of the human equation that you might find in the account executive/client relationship in financial services or insurance - no clients to move, no paper forms to fill, etc.  But, you can find yourself unearthing a whole load of new operational problems.

Usedcarsalesman recently transferred this self-titled blog, Usedcarsalesman.com, from Google’s Blogger service to the TypePad (He rightly believed that Typepad offered better customer service than the larger Blogger, had more diverse publishing tools, and was utilized by a more professional, world-wide cadre of writers).  What was supposed to take 2 weeks grew in to 6 weeks and is still not finished.  Let’s run the list of new and creative travails that the uninitiated blogger, Usedcarsalesman encountered with this transfer:

• A domain registration transfer which demanded that  Usedcarsalesman jump through no fewer than four security “hoops”(a characteristic of domain transfers in 2007, unfortunately). Continued use of the domain name, Usedcarsalesman.com, required him to use a specific list of registrars proved compatible with the TypePad.com publishing service (If you don’t transfer domains on a daily basis, you will find yourself getting a lot of these types of emails from the transfer destination registrar: “we cannot complete the transfer because we don’t have this…”, “however, we cannot complete the transfer because we still don’t have this either).”  Dust in the wind - 2 Weeks
• It required a transfer of content from a service generally incompatible with TypePad - Blogger. 100 single-spaced pages of articles had to be pasted over, one article at a time.  No hitting a button and everything transferring easily and instantaneously from Blogger to TypePad.  The time/date stamp had to be manually adjusted for each article – what a pain in the ass!
• It required learning the functions of the new TypePad service to achieve the same look as with the old service and keep your modest readership friendly. (Frankly, Usedcarsalesman still hasn’t entirely pinned this one down yet). 

Casualties involved in the transfer thus far:

• Most all of the Usedcarsalesman links you find on Google are now DEAD.  Being more an editorialist than a page designer, Usedcarsalesman is still struggling to explain this one (you stop publishing at Blogger, you republish at TypePad and submit to the search engines, you should be back on the map, right? Nah!?)
• Usedcarsalesman’s listing on Blogebrity is deceased also (However, this may have been a dubious “distinction” anyway).
• Knowledge of readership, daily view counts, etc.  Nah.  Have to pay more money to TypePad, install the necessary counters, etc
• General Blogging orientation -  Usedcarsalesman had grown accustomed to the format of Blogger.  The change, though ultimately beneficial, has bogged him down a bit for the last few months, content-creation-wise.  He is struggling with whether he should iron-out his issues with the TypePad service while at the same time publishing each week or whether he should just publish and cross the TypePad format bridge when he gets around to it – this taking a year or more?

If anything, Usedcarsalesman has once-again learned again that new fields, though eliminating some old problems, can create ample new problems.  And, he has learned that there is probably room in the world for a new type of service provider – the Blog Transfer Specialist.  You pay he or she a fee to advise and manage the smooth transfer of your writing from one publishing platform to another (I wouldn’t be surprised if such similar professionals exist to assist financial adviser's, lawyers, or consultants seeking to change their corporate affiliations).  Frankly, Usedcarsalesman doesn’t think most mere web designers (though occasionally knowledgeable) adequately fit the bill of "Blog Transfer Specialist" and decent customer service and FAQ pages at a web publishing platform are, at best, of fractional assistance in a smooth transfer. 

Thank Blog!

Usedcarsalesman is finally back in action, now on the TypePad blog service instead of Google's Blogger. Usedcarsalesman would like to say that in the 5 weeks (est. was 2-4 weeks) that the move has taken - a move which involved the transfer of archived content, a domain transfer to new registrar that allows CNAME control, jumping through more new security "hoops" than a border collie on an agility course - that he spent his time fishing, shooting pool, watching March Madness, getting his girlfriends to dance together for him nude, making paid public appearances etc.  But, no, the reality is that Usedcarsalesman had no such fun (at least, not that you know about).

While getting the transfer to occur, Usedcarsalesan reread some of the more recent posts he made, such as The State of Blogging 2007 (Part II).   Again he came to think of the huge changes that had occurred for the right-brained, the creative types, in the last 15 years as a result of global political shifts and the advent of the widespread use of the Internet/worldwide web. He doesn't think most people realize, yet, a truly, "long term" potentials of the World Wide Web -  how, in theory, anything created on-line, especially writing, could likely still be sitting there 1000 years from now (provided an estate pays all the service fees, of course...ha-ha). If you think about it, that's potentially 1000 years of targeted ad revenue, the work of the writer effectively turning in to a perpetual money machine.   

Regardless, Usedcarsalesman is still the same guy he was 20 years ago.  But, the world and some of the tools in it (Internet, Internet-based services) have certainly grown around him and he's happy about that.

The State of Blogging, 2007 (Part II)

Journalists versus Bloggers: who works within a potentially better, more contemporary financial model?

Journalists who work for traditional print news organizations, such as The Washington Post, write their columns and are paid a salary. Perhaps they receive an employee discount when buying stock in the company or they may receive shares of stock as part of the terms of their employment contract. But, other than employee benefits, the aforementioned is the extent of their financial compensation.   

                                     

You might also correctly deduce that journalists with print news organizations write their articles and columns and those articles and columns are forever owned by the corporate news entity for who they work.  In the past, this may not have been such a bad thing, financially, for a journalist. They were salaried, they wrote one piece, moved on to the next one, and were happy being able to work at what they enjoyed doing.                                          

                     

Although, print newspapers might have had 100 years of old articles, they probably didn’t profit much from them. These articles might be archived, findable on Lexis/Nexis, perhaps rights fees paid to the print news corporation if the articles were used as part of a different company’s information services product.  However, the Web has, at least for the on-line version of the print publication, changed the financial model of the print newspaper. Past editions of the on-line version of the print newspaper are now on servers and the public can access articles in these past editions on the web, directly, for a small fee. Problem for journalists is, though rumor has it that such web-accessible archive services only account for a small percentage of a print news organizations revenue, does one who, say, wrote an article 15 years ago for such a print news organization see any percentage of the revenue from web archive fees? Nope.

It’s a little different for the Blogger. Unlike journalists at traditional print new outlets, individual bloggers are very much connected to ad revenue generated from previous articles, done last year, two years ago, or in some hypothetical future, 50 years ago. For example, a piece such as this one, 10 years from now will still likely be still be circulating on Google and other search engines. Ads will still probably be present on this article and every time a reader clicks on a content-matched, Ad-Sense-type ad aligned with the article, Usedcarsalesman will earn a small fee for it. As such, individual bloggers, like Usedcarsalesman, though nonsalaried, potentially enjoy ad revenue for every bit of writing they’ve done and do, from old to new. Best of all, this financial structure encourages bloggers to keep blogging, to stay in the game, to keep building on the work they’ve done in the past, because that work is potentially worth something on the web – the more of it there is, the more potential for ad revenue.

Will existing journalists leave large print news publications in favor of blogging?

As you can ascertain from the previous paragraph, Time is on Your Side as a Blogger. Yes, some journalists have already leveraged their names and experience working for a print news organization in order to enjoy the potential long-term, financial benefits of “owning” their writing on-line. Is that a jump prudent to make all at once? Probably not. Probably better to build a blog while you are still working for your old news organization and enjoying a salary, etc, doing something for a larger and larger blog readership over time until you can make a smoother financial transition.

But, is that possible to do, to blog while writing for a print news organization? Maybe, maybe not. Usedcarsalesman wouldn’t be surprised if a journalist’s employment contract requires that a journalist hire must clear the publication of any of their writing outside of the company with management of said company. This might preclude journalists from beginning to blog unless they had left the print news organization entirely - a potentially risky proposition.

But what about the kids who, in the past, might have planned to write for a print news organization as adults? Blogging since the age of 12, these once future print journalists might start earning ad revenue from their blog in their early teens, have a substantial body of work and readership built up by the age of 22, and might never feel a need to join a print news organization in order to earn a living as a journalist.

So, in 20 years, you think the print news organizations of the world could be dead, the young journalists who would have been their employees, instead opting to blog?

No, the print news organizations of the world won’t die. They may simply have to accept the sort of new, “space-suited” (By “space-suited,” I mean “receiving independent ‘life support,’” in a figurative sense, from blogging) young journalists who come there way. So, being an established blogger effectively puts the future, rank-and-file journalist in a potentially stronger position versus print news organizations. Such journalists will be able to negotiate with print news organizations from a stronger position, since they are coming in ‘owning’ their past work, receiving continuous ad revenue from this past work and are already read by substantial numbers around the world, apart from a news organization. Print news organizations in the future may have to respect the aforementioned reality and make potentially large concessions to young bloggers to, in some way, convince them to work for their news organizations.

Usedcarsalesman also thinks that the best bloggers may find it beneficial to organize within a large, specialized confederations that creates a synergy in terms of drawing readership, but enable each blogger to earn all the ad revenue associated with their work, old and new, on the site – perhaps, in return for a kick-back to the confederation. To some extent, organizations such as BlogCritics.com are such a confederacy of bloggers – there is a synergy created by it that makes it more likely that any given piece a blogger writes will be read. The site, Metroblogging.com, offers similar benefits to its world-wide participants. However, as for the bloggers on Blogcritics earning the ad revenue associated with their pieces – yeah, well never mind (of course, at this early stage, we are probably not talking really substantial revenue here).

OK, but what if the New York Times, The Washington Post, all print news organizations with on-line outlets, releases the contents of their archives on the web for free?

Won’t this flood the search engines and displace bloggers from formerly higher positions in the search results, now and in to the future? Usedcarsalesman thinks it might. For a blogger to keep earning ad revenue in such a world – a world that could emerge on the Web never or almost instantaneously - he or she would have to focus on specialized content, more specialized than produced by traditional news outlets. This would allow such bloggers to play the biblical Noah and find a way to potentially stay above a “flood” of conventional archived news-material released from traditional sources. Of course, maybe Usedcarsalesman overestimates the effect on bloggers, if the search engines do have to account for masses of newly released archived news material. But, really, who knows?

But, bottom line is that if blogging (content) contributions do flag the first half of 2007 as some analysts predict, this might show who’s serious about blogging and who isn’t. And, it might encourage more traditional journalists, now and future, to recognize the potential financial benefits of blogging and to try it on for size.

The State of Blogging, 2007 (Part I)

Usedcarsalesman.com is getting in to its third calendar year of existence and Usedcarsalesman has a few things he wants you to “buy” (ha ha) about the “State of Blogging” in general (Since he has more than a couple of issues to discuss related to Blogging, Usedcarsalesman is going to cover these in two separate posts - this week is “Part I,” next week is “Part II”).

To start things off, Usedcarsalesman notes a recent comment from the consultants and analysts at The Gartner Group: “… Blogging (content) contributions will peak in the first half of 2007.” What does Usedcarsalesman think about this supposed "peak" in content contribution to blogs in 2007? Well, Usedcarsalesman was, at first, somewhat indifferent to the aforementioned Gartner "insight;" but, minutes later, and after considering whether this report really meant anything to him, Usedcarsalesman still found himself fervently bullish on his own continued endearment to blogging!

Whether there are only a few Bloggers or a hundred million, Usedcarsalesman will still dig blogging or “on-line, periodic self-publishing” or whatever you want to call it. Although only beginning to blog in the latter half of 2004, Usedcarsalesman had technically been writing in a format similar to his Usedcarsalesman.com Blog for seven years prior to 2004, dating back to the beginning of 1996. However, his pre-blog opinions were confined to notes in hand-written journals (“notes” which might actually be fun to scan or transcribe and post as kind of a ’96-04 blog build-up ). But, in 2004 Usedcarsalesman agreed that the new electronic blogging world was right for him, that blogging was a better way to write in a journal - you could work on it at any time, from any computer terminal connected to the Internet, people all over could read and comment, etc. And, it provided a nice pre-fab, web-page format - no pesky web developers to pay, not so much HTML to slog through yourself -perfect for people who had something they wanted to consistently communicate with the world, but didn't want to sit through an e-commerce sales pitch or some no-sense-of-history, '90s-era, Investment Banker-born, .com hype to do so. This made web publishing a little more amenable to a wine and cheese, liberally-educated, Mensa-geek like Usedcarsalesman, who chose to skip junior-high BASIC programming classes in favor of being outdoors.

Obviously, in doing Usedcarsalesman.com, Usedcarsalesman has never exhibited the behaviors of other “amped-up” Bloggers who have keyed something personal or otherwise in to their blogs every 15 minutes to keep readers constantly delivering “hits.” At best, 'Used' has written in this blog once a week for a few hours - sometimes posts came every two weeks or even once a month or not for several months. And, Usedcarsalesman never could figure out how other Bloggers kept posting "crap" 4 times an hour and managed to somehow convince themselves they didn't have their nose in front of a computer or a PDA all day. Doing that would burn out “Used,” too. So, Usedcarsalesman followed and continues to follow a basic, boring editorial format. But, hey, it’s the kind of format that might allow Usedcarsalesman to stick around after the more prolific, 4x per hour Bloggers have been sucked away in a supposed tidal-withdrawal of Bloggers from Blogging in 2007.

Blogging has been and still is a good thing for Usedcarsalesman. It has allowed him to dabble in editorializing without actually being a professional editor. Does this mean Usedcarsalesman has, when Blogging, somehow found himself transplanted to the society Karl Marx mentioned some 160+ years ago in The German Ideology (1845):

"In Communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.?"

Not exactly. The problem is that when you do something enough (like I said, we are getting in to three calendar years for Usedcarsalesman.com) you ultimately develop a mind to self-devote exclusively to this “sphere of activity” (and a second field, too, in Usedcarsalesman’s case). And, now that the “peak" is maybe here, perhaps the world's most serious, grizzled Bloggers will group together, gain support and devote themselves to Blogging as a legitimate, money-making, capitalist field of endeavor. And, perhaps professional reporters and editors (non-Bloggers who work for traditional print media outlets that also publish on-line) will depart from work at these traditional news outlets in favor of Blogging - the potential financial advantages of this departure, Usedcarsalesman will discuss in the "State of Blogging, 2007 (Part II)," next week.

Usedcarsalesman Sees EBay Going 'QVC'

Usedcarsalesman has had an eBay account forever, but he’s always been a buyer, never a seller. However, a couple of weeks ago, ‘Used’ was going through the gear at his place and realized that there were three personal items that he didn’t need and that were taking up space. Since ‘Used’ had some extra cardboard Amazon boxes sitting around, he thought, “why not use the boxes and sell the gear he wasn’t using on Ebay? “ (Note: Usedcarsalesman has recently been informed that Craigslist is a free, no-auction alternative to Ebay and is actually a pretty effective way to move merchandise, too :).

So Usedcarsalesman went through the process of cleaning up the three items, taking photos, setting prices, and writing the “sales copy” for each. The “sales copy” or the eBay Seller’s “Description” category was all important for the sale of each item.  There 'Used' would pitch the merits of the product, its advantages vs. the competition’s product, and its value for the money, thus hopefully helping to win the buyer to purchase his items. And, since he couldn’t really "qualify" the buyers on eBay, 'Used' had to resort to covering every angle in writin, as simply as possible, in the Description category.

However, after adding the Description and photos to each of the three items that he listed, Usedcarsalesman felt like there was something missing from his "sales presentation" for his three listings . Yes, there was impressive sales-oriented wording, convincing arguments, pictures of the item from all angles. But, there was no video with a person shown in action with the item, no person communicating its merits, and none of the smiles, reassurance, personality that you typically get from…well…people selling stuff at your local retail store. Basically, it was just all words and still photos.

Usedcarsalesman did, ultimately, sell his three items on Ebay with words and photos alone, but he kind of felt a little empty afterward. Ebay seemed like a sales venue that really couldn't make use of 'Used's' old-school, retail, face-to-face presentational skills. Would Usedcarsalesman’s skills have any future in the on-line world? He was worried.

So after the items were sold, Usedcarsalesman looked at the eBay Policy regarding the inclusion of video links to an item up for Auction -- video being a way for 'Used' to employ his retail sales skills to win buyers on eBay. Nothing was mentioned in the "eBay Policy about links to video, only to photos. Basically, it appeared to 'Used' that if one were to put an item up for auction and place a video link in its Description, this video link would pass eBay scrutiny. Of course this was only if the video link, say of the item in use by 'Used' or the item’s merits being discussed by 'Used,' fell within the basic boundaries of eBay’s policy on photos:

“Sellers may include links to photos of the item for sale. The photo pages may also contain discrete links to other pages that offer items for sale outside-of-eBay, but may not contain descriptions of or links to specific items on other sites.”

Usedcarsalesman interpreted this as meaning that you could likely shoot video of a person using your item, selling your item, handling your item, etc. But, when you got into including video of specific items that you might have for sale on say, Craig’sList, then you’d probably encounter a gripe/delist from EBay. Bottom line was that it looked like that, if he sold on eBay and employed video links, Usedcarsalesman might have a place for his old-school, retail presentational sales skills in the on-line world after-all – they would just be in the flashier, TV-born QVC, HSN style.

But, had the video link thing been done on eBay, yet? Usedcarsalesman thought that it probably had to by now, especially since free Video-hosting services like YouTube.com and GoogleVideo really started to grab attention this year. But, “Was anybody using YouTube or GoogleVideo to host video involving items being sold on EBay,” Usedcarsalesman wondered.

Sure enough, another blogger, marketingheadhunter.com, had already noticed that there were and this was in April, 2006, about 5 months ago. Marketing Headhunter’s YouTube link in the above URL only showed somebody using a finger to rotate a watch seated in its case – no salesmanship, no QVC style demos, etc. But, the video gave ‘Used’ an idea of what was likely to be, in some circles, a fast growing trend on EBay – QVC-styled video salesmanship. In fact, ‘Used’ even began to see the potential for the best of the Sell-It-On-Ebay stores to start evolving in to micro-QVC’s, each with its own squad of video sales professionals and video production team. Interesting stuff!