…but, the catch is that they are going to raise the commission sellers pay for items that do sell. All in all, eBay is still planning on bringing in the same money as they do now. Their fee changes are an attempt to entice more people to list more times. They say they are making the changes in order to keep pace with other online commerce sites.

But, is cutting the listing fees by up to 50% really going to convince more people to go back to using eBay to sell items? It may have, if the commissions you have tp pay on the final sale price were not going to go up a whopping 68%. Sellers will now pay 8.75 of the final sale price for items under $25.

The new fee structure goes into effect February 20 in the United States. More pricing changes are coming shortly in the United Kingdom and Germany.

EBay says that their growth has flattened out and they are currently seeing a drop in the number of items being listed for sale. They feel the fee changes will remedy this. They are up against sites that do not charge listing fees, like Amazon.

I say, simply remove the listing fees altogether. I know that I stopped selling on eBay when the fees got too high. I could do as other sellers do and simply charge more for shipping, but I feel that is dishonest and I cannot bring myself to play that particular game.

On the other hand, I met a mom at school today who sells new and used Gymboree on eBay for a living. We talked about her selling my daughter’s used boutique clothing. She says there are ways to make sure you make more than enough profit to cover fees.

I have to buy a gift for a birthday party my daughter is attending this Saturday. Money is tight right now and I want to be frugal, but I also want to give the child a nice gift. She is in my daughter’s class and has ridden in my van for field trips. She is one of the sweeter girls in the class and gets along well with my daughter.

I made a compulsive stop at the local Hospice Thrift Store and was thrilled to find someone had donated cases and cases of brand new Cherished Teddy figurines by Enesco. I picked through the box and although I could not find one for a 5th Birthday specifically, I found loads of nice figures and even a plush Cherished Teddy. Most of the items were priced at $1.99, so I stocked up and bought ahead for other events. Just because I did not pay full retail does not make these cute Cherished Teddies any less thoughtful or appropriate.

I love a thrifty find like this! Stretching my dollar as far as possible is important to me.

Now is a good time to be a girl. The world is wide open for women today and anything, absolutely anything, you want to do, and you can. No doubts, no ceilings, no strings. And the coolest part? Things are only going to get better.

I love that the barriers are coming down, particularly in the job world. I can’t think of anything girls can’t be. Women are soldiers, mechanics, forest rangers, and software engineers. And then, most of them also come home and are moms on top of everything else. Try that one on for size, boys!

The most empowering part of my life is being a mom and supporting myself and my daughter on my own, with my own sweat, education and energy. Because I am so independent and confident, I can see daily the traits that my daughter is assimilating and it feels GOOD! I am raising a happy, confident daughter who loves being a girl and knows she is strong enough to help herself.

Girl Mogul is a website with products that encourage and celebrate the girls, the women, the females that are strong and forward thinking. They have a cool shirt I am going to order for my daughter, to keep her inspired: Future Rocket Scientist. I included a picture of the graphic in this post.

I had a lot of fun before Christmas with Overstock.com’s All I Want for Christmas Giveaway. So, I am tickled pink to see that they are starting a Game O Love on their website, just in time for Valentine’s Day. The promotion is running from January 25th to February 11th and you can register to win gifts for all the loves in your life.

If you go on over to the site now, you can enter your e-mail address so Overstock can send you a reminder when the game goes live.

My personal gift list for Valentine’s Day is a little different than it has been in years past. I am a happily divorced Mommy and my heart and soul are both focused on the love of my life – my daughter. I’m a pushover for giving her things she wants and Valentine’s Day is yet another excuse for me to check another item off her long life of gimmes.

My mother recently decided to learn how to play the guitar and Gigi has seen her grandmother practicing, so she decided she would also like a guitar. She specified, however, that her guitar should be pink. Well, look at what I found on Overstock! A pink guitar with a heart-shaped sound hole. Perfect for Valentine’s Day, wouldn’t you agree? I’ve got it on my list now and it is to be my first Game O Love entry.

Most major, and even minor, holiday spur a rush of advertisement s from thr jewelry industry. There always seems to be a reason that we need to buy gold and diamonds, according to these ads. I like jewelry to a point. I am not the type that likes to go out in public dripping in gold, much to the chagrin of my ex’s family. They were stunned that I did not follow their examples and drape myself in gold chains and buy a costly ring for each of my fingers, and some of my toes. I personally just like a few modest pieces of high quality jewelry.

One of the things I have noticed is that the jewelry ads on TV tend to focus on men buying jewelry fro women. For the most part men’s jewelry is pretty much overlooked. I know men still wear watches and rings, though necklaces seem to be large out of vogue for men, save for the very young. You just don’t see lavish, emotional TV spots urging women to buy expensive jewelry for the men in their lives. I wonder if this is an untapped emotional buying market? With the role of women shift into more powerful ranks every year, it seems just as rational to tell women they should make large emotional purchases for men as it does to tell men to purchase for the women in their lives.

My niece is becoming increasingly difficult to buy for now that she is nearly 16. Her big thing right now is clothing and when I have looked around at a lot of the popular clothing stores in the mall that are big with the teen set, I was in total sticker shock. Holy cow! It has become expensive to be a kid these days. The whole junior clothing market is so different than when I was growing up in the 80s!

So, I told my niece I would buy her a few pieces of clothing for her birthday, but I’m having her look though the Heavenly Couture website to choose them, because the stuff is very cool – very much in her style book, so to speak. And it is just right for my budget, since nothing on the site costs more than $17.95. Yay for deep discounts and smart fashion buyers.

The site is chock full of fashion. They have everything from basic tees (for about $7) to dresses and cool denim. My niece picked out five things as soon as she got the link! She had a list back to me in no time. She is a champion shopper, that one. I’m getting her the cargo pants I picture in my article as well as a few tees and a jacket. She can mix and match and come out with a few cool new outfits.

There seem to be three camps people fall into when it comes to cars and transportation:
1. people who use public transportation exclusively
2. people who buy their cars outright
3. people who prefer to lease vehicles

Even in my own family we have a mix of opinions on this topic. Myself, I have always been one to buy a car. I figure if I can get a good enough deal on a car and make it last long enough, I will eventually have transportation without car payments. On the other hand, my cars have not been lasting all that long without acquiring major problems, so my sister’s propensity for contract hire situations sometimes seems like the logical way to go about keeping a car in the family with minimal fuss.

Whether your lease of buy; the information coming at you from the car commercials on TV and in the newspapers is just overwhelming. I cannot keep the “deals” straight in my head long enough to really see who has the best situation for me. I do know that I need to rethink my car situation, perhaps trading both my cars for one that is more fuel efficient.

Folks over in the UK have access to a helpful site called BuyYourCar that sifts through and finds the cheapest leasing deals in your area. They also look at purchasing prices and reviews for new and used cars, as well as insurance and loan info. Pretty handy.

I know it is a trite stereotype, but there are just some people who feel like they are always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Well, I’m not sure I fall into that category, because I have already been married and divorced and I am in no general rush to do it again. If the right man comes along, I will address the issue at that time. Until then, I’m a happy single girl.

I am, though, the eternal bridesmaid. I must look darn good in a bridesmaid dress, because I find myself walking down the aisle in front of one friend or another more often than most people. Of course, I have to wonder if this is not because of my propensity for wedding planning. I tend to get pulled into planning weddings for my friends, simply because I am good at it and when it is not my own wedding I am cool, calm, collected, and oh so very organized.

Brenda lives in Hartford, CT. Her wedding is this coming September (my favorite month for a northern wedding) and I’m going to be a bridesmaid. I have also been asked to help with planning, but I really hate to go it alone when I am not right there in the area to inspect the vendors and talk to the people involved. So, I’m using websites like 1WeddingSource.com to find local vendors and reviews for Hartford Weddings, and then I have talked Brenda’s sister into doing the legwork for me to go and check out venues and florists and decorators, etc. I’ve used this website in the past to help me plan a friend’s wedding in New Mexico. Can you even imagine how I would accomplish this if I did not have Brenda’s sister and the internet? Yay for technology and free weekend and evening minutes on my cell phone

I love my cell phone and I am in no real hurry to replace it. Plus, my contract with Sprint is finally up and I am a free agent, which feels good. If I let them talk me into a new free phone, then I end up signing away in blood again.

But, you should see my phone. It is beginning to show its age. I have never kept in a case or had a good cover for it. Don’t get me wrong. It looks “ok”, but I’ve been hard on the poor thing. The scratches on it are what have kept me from carrying my TomTom and Palm more often.

I found this product called the invisibleSHIELD™, though, and it is just what I need to protect my beloved gadgets from the wear and tear I put them through on a daily basis. It is made from the same material the military uses to protect helicopter blades, strong stuff. There are designs to cover most any gadget, including iPods, MacBooks, cell phones, and even my TomTom One. They will custom make a cover if you can’t find what you need on their site. Need a particular ipod case? Just let them know. Look first, though. I was impressed with their selection.

The best thing about the invisibleSHIELD is that it is a “full body” cover for your device, custom cut to fit the unique angles of each gadget. And, they are super inexpensive.

I love that the internet gives me access to thousands and thousands of cool t-shirt designs. I’ve found some of the funniest, hippest, most cutting-edge designs online and ordered them with the click of a mouse. And, when all else fails, t-shirts are the best gift option out there. Everyone wears t-shirts.

Have you ever wished that you had a way to put one of your signature pithy sayings onto a t-shirt? Or, maybe you have a great design in mind, but no way to actually get it onto a t-shirt? I’m looking at an amazing concept right now on the BlueCotton website. They have a tool called Design Studio.

Design Studio lets you design your own t-shirts. You choose from an array of clipart, fonts, effects, and colors. You cam move elements around, resize them, mess with the color schemes, just about anything you can think of. In the end, you come away with a design as unique as you are. You can use it to make a cool logo shirt for a fundraiser, a design for a special birthday, custom fraternity t-shirts, a saucy slogan for your girls’ weekend out, or anything else you can dream. The possibilities are endless.

Give Design Studio a try, especially if you have a Christmas gift you’re stuck on. This is the perfect gift solution for absolutely anyone.

Since I mentioned earlier today that I am putting together digital scrapbook pages in order to order calendars for my parents, I wanted to also give everyone the link I am using to order the calendars, since the calendars are free. Yep, free. What could be better than a free photo calendar? I’m doing the photos for the wall calendars, since you can use one picture for each month – plus a cover, which I forgot that I still need to design!

So, here is my link for the free photo calendar. I am ordering one tonight and my sister is order another. They should round out our gift lists quite well.

Here is one page. It would be a lot of trouble to post all 12 months, plus it might just annoy all of you anyway?

I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels in my life. I used to travel a LOT for work and now I travel simply because I enjoy getting out and seeing the world around me, or more often the state around me. Last night, my best friend and I were discussing booking one of the theme hotels in Kissimmee for us and the kids so we can take a mini vacation at the parks.

The thing about hotels is that they are either truly pleasant, or a real chore. A pleasant hotel has two things, in my opinion: cleanliness and décor that makes you feel spoiled and surrounded by luxury.

There are companies that specialize in beautifying retail establishments, restaurants, resorts and hotels. When decorators go to work on a hotel, they want it to look nice, but they are often restricted by budget issues. That’s why buyers tend to gravitate to businesses like Tres Amigos, a seller of rustic wholesale furniture, who in their own right have a large buying influence and can obtain décor at much lower prices because of the volume at which they purchase.

Tres Amigos focuses on Spanish Colonial, Tuscan, Rustic and Southwest style. And, although they sell to everyone on a per piece basis, it only takes $1000 to bump up to wholesale status. And because of the sheer volume of their business, they are able to cater to huge projects just as easily as they can to the small ones. A hotel planning a folksy southwest look will find their selection of Mexican wholesale furniture invaluable. While most large-volume sellers are going to only offer the kind of items that are “a dime a dozen” in their lack of uniqueness, Tres Amigos has Spanish Colonial wholesale furniture and accessories (among their other styles) that are made exclusively for them so that their inventory is able to reflect a “one of a kind” flavor. They can even work with you to design items that are unique to you.

Additionally, Tres Amigos has a full container program and can source from Mexico, India, Indonesia and elsewhere.

Individual customers like me are not excluded, because they still make their inventory ultimately affordable. And, I stumbled on their hand crafted jewelry selection, which is absolutely stunning and more affordable than I had even imagined. I grew up in a home where my parents decorated using mostly a Tuscan style, so this furniture feels like home as I browse the selections. I’m currently debating one of the armoires they have on their site right now. It would look VERY good in my bedroom.

When I went back to school last fall to get my teaching certification, I was pleasantly surprised by all of the discounts I was eligible for as a student. I fished me my last degrees way back in 1992 and I really don’t remember suing my student ID for much of anything off campus back then. This time around I took advantage of cheaper movie tickets, discounts at a lot of area attractions, and the best thing of all, in my opinion – the ability to purchase academic versions of lots of computer software. I’m still technically enrolled, so I still get the discounts. Plus, as a teacher, those discounts are still extended to me. It’s a massive bonus I never even considered before I actually had it in my hands.

CostCaptain.com is a Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller. That means they sell all kinds of Microsoft products, like the Office Suite and Vista, to students and staff of educational institutions, labs, museums, libraries, and home-school programs. All you have to do to receive the products at an academic price is prove eligibility.

The difference here is that CostCaptain is selling the full versions of the software, rather than student versions. You just save a bundle. I just looked on Microsoft’s website and they are selling the Office 2007 Suite Professional for $499.95. CostCaptain has it for $179.99, if you are eligible. That’s an amazing savings.

Hey, if you have a student to buy for this Christmas, you might consider getting them a gift certificate from the site. Talk about a cool gift idea.

Since Christmas is a time where charity and doing things for other people is more important than ever, I love it when I can find a way to buy a unique gift for someone and know that my purchase honestly benefits someone who will actually see the difference my purchase made.

I receive Food and Wine magazine and I first saw JacarandaStyle in one of my past issues. I visited their website to find out more about their completely stunning merchandise and ended up spending a lot time learning about how the company is able to create employment for artists in the world market and also donates a portion of each sale to the Ethembeni School for Disabled Youth, in South Africa. According to the JacarandaStyle, the school has been around since 1984 and “serves 300 physically disabled and visually impaired children from all over Kwazulu -Natal, Kingdom of the Zulu.”

I’m looking around their site again tonight and I’m particularly drawn to the ceramics, which tend toward bold colors and sharp imagery. This new Jazz Bowl elicits a musical theme, even incorporating piano keys into the design. It’s earthy and sultry. It is fantastic, eye-catching, a true conversation piece. Each piece is hand painted (lead free paints) and signed by the artist. I can see this in a prominent spot on my coffee table, but the pieces are actually safe to use for food and you can put them in the dishwasher. Here, I’m including a picture so you can see just how cool this bowl is:

Oh, and I want to point out that there is actually a coupon code you can use on the site for 10% off that is valid through December, 14, 2007: JSTYLE.

Tomorrow, December 4, is the annual Holiday Helper event at Target stores nationwide. The event goes from 8 am to 10 am and all seniors receive cookies, milk, and juice, free gift warping, and even shopping assistance if you want it. Seniors will also receive coupon packets that include a $5 off a $25 purchase.

So, if you are one our nation’s lovely senior citizens and can make it to your local Target store, you’ll not want to miss an even that actual shows some respect to our wiser generation during this busy shopping season. I’m not one to usually brave the crowds, because I cannot abide seeing how rue some folks get during this time of year. An event that is planned around actually giving direct assistance to shoppers is refreshingly in line with the spirit of Christmas.