Monthly Archives: May 2009

Chloé St-Amour sells her tarot readings on eBay

st-loveThe thought of going to the local fortuneteller or tarot card expert brings up some clichéd imagery. Of course, there is the long strings of beads hanging down from the arch entrance. Behind that, the hollywood standard is a woman with black hair. Mysterious blue eyes? That too.

Chloé St-Amour of Montéal, Canada fits this description pretty well. The difference is she will give you a tarot reading online that you can buy on eBay.

I am Chloé Saint-Amour and I have been practicing clairvoyance with the Tarot for more than 35 years. Ever since I was a child I have been impregnated by the mystery and the science of the Tarot.

I PROPOSE YOU TODAY A PSYCHIC READING OF QUALITY AND TRUTH, WHICH ALLOWS YOU TO TAKE THE GOOD DECISIONS IN YOUR LIFE AS YOUR FUTURE.

So how do you get your reading? Apparently by e-mail. Prepare to be astonished.

Teen offers up his butt as ad space

butt-tattooDo you have a web site, business, logo, company name etc. that you are just dying to promote?

Banner ads just don’t seem effective as they used to be. Does anyone pay attention to billboards, even in rush hour traffic?

This dude has the answer! He has the new advertising medium you have been dying to sink your marketing dollars into… his buttocks.

Here is a sample of his hilarious blurb, however, be sure to read the whole thing on eBay. It is better to see the real auction for yourself.

I will get a real permanent tattoo of your advertisement, website, tattoo design, logo, company name, or whatever you may think of immediately after the auction closes.

Now a little about me… I’m 18 going on 19 years old. Next week I will be moving to Mount Pleasant, Michigan, which is home to thousands of college students. There are two colleges in downtown Mount Pleasant, Central Michigan University and Mid-Michigan Community College. Another college, Ferris State University, is less than 30 minutes away. I have a passion for music, and love hanging out with people.

Okay, great, he loves tattoos. The part that baffles me is how he thinks his butt is such a great advertising opportunity. Unless he hangs out with his college buddies in the buff, only a few lucky ladies will get to see your ad buy.

Happy bidding!

eBay no longer fun? Try using some auction tools

Yesterday, an article written by Keith Rabois was posted on seekingalpha, slamming eBay for not being fun anymore. “Where Did All the Fun Go?”, the headline asks.

Most often, people blame eBay’s decay on factors like the weakening economy, the rise of Amazon, as well as eBay’s own inefficient search functionality. But the real and simple reason is eBay is no longer fun. Over the years, it has lost online ground and eyeballs to pure entertainment destinations such as YouTube and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

To help push this argument home, various traffic research graphs illustrate how eBay’s traffic has slowed down (see the most recent example below, comparing 2007 and 2008). While the internet as a whole grew, eBay shrunk.

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In the first quarter of 2004, almost 50 percent of the entire U.S. Internet population visited eBay every month. By 2008, eBay’s visitors accounted for only 1.5 percent of total minutes spent online.

Still, I fail to see how less traffic necessarily means online auctions are not as fun as they used to be to the average person.

In a similar (and more convincing) article, Scot Wingo blames online classified sites such as kijiji or craigslist for eBay’s dwindling popularity.

pew-classified-adsNewspapers were losing classified revenue to eBay hand over fist in 2000/2001, as eBay gave people a much easier way to sell their items. The Pew Internet Project released a report, showing that classified sites (mainly craigslist), have doubled in usage between 2005-2009.

Was it just social networking and free online classified ads that led to the decline or is there more to this?

Has eBay become just another dull shopping site?

Perhaps eBay was more fun in 2000 because it was relatively new. For many at the time, buying online was a fascinating new possibility and the fact it was an online auction made it more exciting.

One user commented that sniping tools have taken the fun away. “You are battling a competitor you’ve fought a number of times before–and someone comes in 5 seconds before the end of the auction with a computerized snipe taking it away from both of you.”

Sure it sucks being sniped when you lose. But how about when you win? For web savvy surfers sniping tools are great since they allow you to set the maximum bid and forget about it. One reason eBay isn’t getting as much traffic, is because snipers don’t have to keep visiting the auction, refreshing their browser and staring at a clock.

Less time on eBay might simply mean surfers have become more efficient with the use of numerous online tools. In my eyes, the tools make eBay a more exciting place to visit all over again.

Find Hidden Deals on eBay now!

Mexican swine flu plush toy auction

Bizarre and stupid eBay auctions are an endless source of amusement.

One that sticks out in my mind as a classic is the man that sold his ex-wife’s wedding dress on eBay. Doesn’t sound that bad? Well, this man posted tasteless photos with him wearing the dress. The description spoke of how she took the ring but left the dress and he didn’t need a “$1200 shower curtain.”

Today we will look at a really outlandish auction I spotted on a great site for finding such things.

Here we have a nicely detailed Mexican swine flu pig with a runny nose, removable Mexican sombrero, blanket and removable mask. I wish my snot looked this toxic and uber-green.

The seller tries to close the deal with: “Now you can have your very own Mexican swine flu pig!” See, they know this is what I always wanted, a dirty animal with an infectious disease in my home. It’s almost criminal that there isn’t one bid on this pink little guy.

“PAYPAL ONLY”

What ever happened to Yahoo The 9?

The 9 was a daily video compilation, or vlog, on Yahoo! featuring the nine top “web finds” of the day. It was launched on Yahoo!’s homepage (and Yahoo! TV) on July 10, 2006. The show, hosted by Maria Sansone, followed a similar format to pop culture list shows on cable TV.

What set The 9 apart was, although it had a candy-coated exterior with a pretty, bubbly girl hosting it, underneath it all it was a show for web geeks. The nameless, faceless Yahoo staff members scoured the internet, looking for sites with new, innovative ideas. They also let you in on what they thought was funny online. Often this would be a goofy flavor-of-the-month Youtube video. To keep things light the host threw in the occasional football reference in an attempted to keep general audiences appeased.

Another interesting inclusion was the Pepsi Tenth – a feature where viewers could submit websites that the producers of The 9 missed. The next day, one (sometimes more) of the nine websites was a “Pepsi Tenth” site.

typohound on the 9I hadn’t heard about The 9 until July 27, 2006. A massive surge of traffic was coming from a Yahoo page. When I checked it out I was of course thrilled. There Maria was, touting the site I had worked so hard to promote. Although, I had done a lot to get the word out that month, I was still surprised that the producers of The 9 even found my modest site, TypoHound.

It turned out that they likely found about it on i-am-bored.com. The staff at Yahoo frequented this site looking for ideas. When I submitted TypoHound to i-am-bored.com, I didn’t expect much. It ended up receiving tons of hits and comments, many positive, many negative and the site became a hot topic.

The 9 was canned on March 31st, 2008. You can still visit the site but the only thing they have left up is the phrase: “The 9 has left the building.”

A Yahoo representative provided this comment: “‘The 9’ was a groundbreaking and successful Internet show, and we learned a great deal from it. Over the past two years that we have produced ‘The 9,’ our content strategy and business has evolved. We are turning our focus to more contextually relevant programs that complement our site offerings. For example, ‘Primetime in No Time,’ leverages the ‘recap’ format of ‘The 9,’ highlights TV programming from the night before, and lives on the Yahoo TV site.”

Sure, that is fine. What baffles me is why they put all that work into the show and then removed all the content and videos when it was cancelled. Would it hurt Yahoo to provide an archive?

Bring back this page, Yahoo. I’d like to see Maria talk about searching for David Hasselhoff items with TypoHound one more time.
http://9.yahoo.com/2006/07/27

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