I’m In The Money!
Posted Tuesday July 27th 2010
So the first step in my little experiment went rather quickly – quicker then I expected! After listing the cable modem last night it sold this morning fetching £10 (someone couldn’t wait to get their hands on it and went for the “Buy It Now” option) minus eBay/Paypal fees makes £8.07 profit. Thanks Virgin Media! That’s more than enough start-up cash to get me going, the only problem is the sale came so quickly I haven’t yet scoped out any possible investments. I will send out an update when I decide what my first purchase will be. Check out the stats :
Purchases : 0
Sales : 1
Profit : £8.07
Tags: eBay
My eBay Monkey Project
Posted Monday July 26th 2010
For those who know me, you may remember that whilst at university I traded on eBay in order to support myself instead of getting a job like other people. You will also know that I was completely hooked and talking about eBay when I was in ear shot was probably a mistake! When university was over I stopped eBay-ing and got myself a ‘proper’ job but increasingly I started to miss the thrill or buying and selling and more importantly the thrill of making money.
My boss Faith like me is hooked on buying and selling – thats why she runs her own business and has done for over 11 years. We often talk about our various money making schemes and it is during these chats that I feel the eBay monkey sitting on my shoulder telling me that there is so much money to be made, so much potential. My eBay monkey wants me to get hooked again – to make enless journeys to the post office, to check my auctions constantly … to have nightmares about getting that feared negative feedback!
Stories such as One Red Paperclip and Around The World In 80 Trades got me thinking – maybe there is a way to satisfy my eBay monkey whilst putting my entrepreneurial skills to the test and making some cash. Maybe I could buy and sell my way from nothing to something big, something to silence the monkey once and for all.
So where to start? Obviously I need something to sell and preferably something that won’t cost anything to begin with so I don’t start with minus money. Thats where Virgin Media comes in. People who know me should also know i’m not a fan of Virgin Media, so when I remembered the old cable modem I have had lying around for ages I figured this was a pretty good way of VM making it up to me. I have no idea why I have held on to this thing for so long instead of throwing it out – buy maybe VM could start me off on my journey by giving me some start-up cash. A quick search of eBay’s completed listings tells me that on average these can fetch between nothing and £15 so on eBay the VM cabel modem goes… fingers crossed for nearer £15 then nothing. Otherwise this could take a while!
I know there has been far too many “Maybes” in the above paragraphs, but read this space to see how I get on – there could be ups and downs but I think that is part of the excitement. Maybe I will work my way up to serious money only to blow it on an unlucky investment, maybe I will get enough money together to start that café I have always dreamt of. The beauty is there is nothing to loose but potentially so much to gain (too Cliché?)
Tags: eBay
Add eBay Listings To Your Website In Seconds
Posted Sunday March 21st 2010
If you sell things on eBay then getting your listings seen by as many people as possible can be the difference between selling your item for 99p or £99. Whether you use eBay as an additional outlet for your existing online business or as a way of clearing out your garage – listing your items on your website can be an excellent way of directing visitors of your site to your eBay listings.
Keeping your listings up to date can be a real headache which is why having a listing tool such as Auction Nudge that automatically updates and displays your current eBay listings on your website can be a real time saver.
The listings below are generated by pasting one line of code into the HTML of your web page (Note: I am not affiliated with this eBay member in any way.) :
This is generated by the following code :
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.auctionnudge.com/0.5/build.php?ebayID=soundswholesale&type=user&site=uk&cols=2&limit=4&theme=4"></script><div id="auctionNudge"></div>To get Auction Nudge working on your site you can either copy the above code, changing your eBay ID as necessary and pasting it onto your web page or by visiting Auction Nudge to enter your display settings and get your listing code. There is no registration required and you can view a demo of how your listings will look by just entering your eBay username!
Tags: Web Development • eBay
Google Change The Meaning Of ‘Free’
Posted Wednesday March 10th 2010
I have been promoting one of my other sites recently and when I saw my latest ‘Free’ Google AdWords voucher (they’re not exactly uncommon!) I thought I may as well give it a go. I have never used AdWords before so I went through the sign up process with my voucher in hand.
I created my campaign and didn’t mind the fact that that they wanted billing information before they could activate my account – but then I noticed that there was a ‘activaion fee’ of £5 in my case that I needed to ay in order to activate my account. I took another look at the ad – yup “Try it for free – £50.00* FREE advertising. No risk. No obligation” and then I looked at the small print – “A £5 account activation fee or equivalent credit deduction required”.
That sounds neither ‘Free’ or ‘No obligation’ to me.
Perhaps the ad is targeting existing AdWords users where they have already payed their fee? Nope – “The promotional code can only be used for AdWords accounts less than 14 days old”.
It might not have annoyed me if it was aimed at being ‘Free’ to existing members who have already paid their fee, but the fact they are targeting new customers with the promise of ‘No Obligation’ which is a down right lie. You may think that £5 isn’t worth getting worked up over – but I feel this kind of advert is deceiving.
Needless to say I did’t bother continuing my account creation. So all this advert did was waste my time, annoy me and give me yet another reason to dislike the big G.
Rant over.
Tags: Dislikes • Search Engine Stuff
Stop Spotlight From Indexing External Drives
Posted Sunday February 28th 2010
Spotlight in OS X annoyingly indexes external devices like USB pen drives and cameras when mounted. You can block spotlight by using the ‘privacy’ setting in preferences, however once unmonted this seems to get forgotten. To make sure spotlight never indexes a drive you can add a hidden file to the root folder of that device to prevent it getting indexed forever. Create a file called .metadata_never_index
For example to block my camera all I did was :
touch /Volumes/CAMERA/.metadata_never_index
Now if only there was a setting to block all external drives…
Tags: OS X
Getting Text Back From All Caps In Photoshop Elements (Not CAPS LOCK!)
Posted Monday February 8th 2010
After getting rather confused as to why my text layer in Photoshop Elements 6 would not budge from being in all caps (no not because of CAPS LOCK!) I discovered that to get it back to normal you need to do :
Mac :
Command ('Apple Key') + Shift + Y
Windows :
Ctrl + Shift + Y
This will put the text back to sentence case or lower case (whatever it should be before it was being forced into all caps)
moreHawes Through Time
Posted Thursday February 4th 2010
Since I have been working on updating this site recently I thought I would delve into the history books (not really that far back) and look at the previous versions of my website.
Although slightly pointless, I have spent a fair bit of time making these so it’s nice to remember.
Version 1
Between around 2004 – 2005, I made this site before I even knew what programming really was, but that didn’t stop me wanting to be a web designer!
The site consisted of a simple 5-page site with a few fancy animated graphics. Still now I like how this site looks.
Version 2
Around 2005 – 2007. I knew a bit of PHP by now and decided that a new site was in order! Re-inventing the wheel slightly I write some scripts for comments, a basic forum and a few other twiddly bits.
Version 3
Around 2007 – 2008. Enter Drupal! I quickly realised the potential of using a content management system, though at this stage I was using it pretty much out of the box.
Version 4
2009 – 2010! Still using Drupal but heavily customised with my own theme. I have organised my content in more of a blog style with all sorts of fancy witchcraft working behind the scenes.
Version 5
2010 – present. Hello WordPress! A complete re-write, re-design and migration to WordPress. Since starting to use WordPress it quickly because my CMS of choice with it’s long features list and great community support. It’s a tool that really makes publishing on the web a hassle-free task.
Tags: Internet • Me • Wordpress
Nochex Steal Your Money
Posted Tuesday August 25th 2009
For a client recently I had to test osCommerce was accepting Nochex payments. Having never used it before I went through the lengthy and painful process of signing up for a Nochex account.
Well now I know why no one used Nochex. It’s rubbish. It’s the only thing that would make me recommend Paypal (and I hate Paypal) to anyone but at least their service does what it is supposed to with minimum fuss.
OsCommerce was working fine and accepted my Nochex account but Nochex wouldn’t accept my address, so I was unable to put a card straight through (as a user without an existing Nochex account might). So I gave up on that as the client offers their own credit card gateway.
So I thought that was that – but when you add a credit/debit card to Nochex they debit a ‘small’ amount from your card to help with their verification process. They didn’t go out of their way to tell you this when you register and they certainly don’t make it clear enough that this is non-refundable!
So there I was waiting for my couple of quid to get refunded only to discover it has been stolen. And for what? … other one for ‘the list’
Tags: Boycotts • Dislikes • Me • Search Engine Stuff • e-commerce • osCommerce
Web Usability – Even The Big Boys Get It Wrong
Posted Tuesday April 28th 2009
At work recently I have been looking into usability principles and in particular our checkout procedure. This consists of streamlining the process by reducing the number of hoops the user must jump through whilst trying to build confidence in the customer.
Whilst booking flights to Australia the other day I was surprised that even the big boys can get it wrong! Although the checkout procedure was smooth – this screen was the first thing I saw after I clicked the “pay” button:
Not exactly confidence building! This page is supposed to redirect the user to their card holders ‘secure code’ page to prevent fraud and authorise payment. However when the re-direct doesn’t work a green screen with a form button seems to be enough to maintain the users confidence confidence!
Tags: Likes
Easily Generate Javascript and PHP Error Checking For Your Forms
Posted Friday April 10th 2009
I wanted a quick and easy way of adding Javascript and PHP error checking to my form elements. The benefit of this is that errors can be caught using Javascript before the form is submitted, but if JS is disabled in the users browser then the error is still caught using PHP.
The method I came up with to solve this is very simple and can be easily added to form elements with little extra code. The error checking is done by checking input against regular expressions.
See the demo and demo source code.
Code Explaination
One function is used to create both forms of error checking:
<?php $jsChecks = ""; //holds JS error checks $errorFound = false; //PHP error flag //Creates both JS and PHP error checks function errorCheck($elementName, $regExp, $errMsg) { global $jsChecks; global $errorFound; //Create Javascript error checking $check = ' var ' . $elementName . 'Filter = ' . $regExp . '; if (!' . $elementName . 'Filter.test(theForm.' . $elementName . '.value)) { errorMessage += "\n * ' . $errMsg . '"; errorFound = true; }' . "\n"; $jsChecks .= $check; //PHP error checking and return input class if(isset($_POST["formSubmitted"])) { //if form submitted if(!preg_match($regExp, $_POST[$elementName])) { $errorFound = true; return "error"; //css error class } } return ""; //no class if no error detected }
Error checking is created for the form elements specifying which element (by name), a regular expression to be checked against and a custom error message:
//Create error checking $nameError = errorCheck("name", "/([a-z0-9]{3}[a-z0-9]?)/", "Name is too short"); //Must be 3 chars or over $emailError = errorCheck("email", "/^[a-z0-9]+([_\\.-][a-z0-9]+)*@([a-z0-9]+([\.-][a-z0-9]+)*)+\\.[a-z]{2,}$/i", "Invalid Email Address"); //must be valid email address
If no error is found then process the data.
//If no error found if(!$errorFound) { //Process form data... } ?>
In our head tags we add the following Javascript and CSS rules. The Javascipt checks we created for each element are included here by the PHP ehco:
<style type="text/css"> input { border: 1px solid #DDD; } .error { border: 1px dashed #F00; } </style> <script type="text/javascript"> <!-- function validateForm(theForm) { var errorFound = false; var errorMessage = "Please correct the following errors:\n"; <?php echo $jsChecks ?> if(errorFound) { alert(errorMessage); } return !errorFound; } //--> </script>
The form is really simple with code to display a CSS class depending on whether a error is detected (for the PHP error checking) and to set the value of the field:
<form method="post" onSubmit="return validateForm(this)"> <label for="name"><strong>Name</strong> (must be 3 characters or over)</label><br /> <input type="text" name="name" id="name" size="30" class="<?php echo $nameError ?>" value="<?php echo @ $_POST['name'] ?>" /><br /> <label for="email"><strong>Email Address</strong> (must be a valid email address)</label><br /> <input type="text" name="email" id="email" size="30" class="<?php echo $emailError ?>" value="<?php echo @ $_POST['email'] ?>" /> <br /> <input type="hidden" name="formSubmitted" id="formSubmitted" value="true" /> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </form>
There you are, both Javascript and PHP error checking! See the complete source code here.
Tags: Javacsript • PHP • Programming • Web Development