"The Ebay Sellers Idea..."
The whole idea of sending you to the Ebay sellers I had used, came about, quite
simply, because over time, I bought a LOT of items to make my jewelryeidoscopes
for WAY too low of a price. In quite a few cases I actually felt bad. I think I
might even have sent extra money to a few sellers...Hmmm.
The nicest way I could think of to repay them and thank them for being so great was
to make links to them on the website I was building. If my link could bring them sales...Fantastic!!
What my mind kept working over was that any idea that could possibly help so many other people, that I didn't even know, had to be a great idea. So, believing in myself
and wondering the whole time if I was crazy, I've spent months and months and
months setting everything up for the sellers...
I have literally documented every purchase and every Ebay seller for each of my
pieces for the past year, to the point that I now have eight binders that are two feet
thick with paperwork! I had no idea that this simple idea would grow into such an enormous undertaking...
On the third jewelryeidoscope, when the idea of what I was really doing struck me, I began to actively search for items that were from an era that no longer existed.
Such as American companies that no longer were in operation...
I generally set a limit of no more then ten dollars for an item. There were
a few occasions where the items were higher priced but only when it was an item
that I rarely, if ever, saw listed.
I routinely had fifty to ninety searches going on at any given time. I learned
SO much about items in the world that I had never even knew existed. What
a fabulous history lesson it has been! One item would lead to another and to
another and to another...
I even had some fun with the searches:
It became important to me to want to recommend the seller. I began to specifically look
for good feedback, low shipping and basically, a seller who really took their role
as a seller seriously. Ebay is, after all, all about honor...
It became apparent over time that some links couldn't be created. The seller might have stopped selling. Or, like in a few cases where I had bought an item from a seller I didn't really want to introduce to the world...That's when I came up with the idea of creating links to the exact search wording.
Looking for a 'White Porcelain Angel' like I used in #16 Angel Rose?
Click on the link and you're there...complete with current listings!
I was dying to tell the other sellers about what I was doing. But, I knew that if I told them, it would mean they could possibly market their items towards a different market...the artist. I couldn't risk that...They only found out shortly before I launched everything. :)
While I was feeling good about maybe doing something nice, I was also discovering
that I had, by accident, found something I was completely in love with doing and totally passionate about. Each scope or art sculpture makes a statement and has a story to tell...They are my way of showing my soul to the world. I hope they make
you smile and I hope they make you think...
Nancy Boevingloh
December 2008
