PerfectMike.Com

Well, I have to be honest. I was disappointed with the way that my T-shirt and sweatshirt auctions went. Quite a few of the shirts didn’t even sell for the 99 cents that I started them at, and a few of them sold for exactly 99 cents.

Even with the incentive that the auctions were being held in the name of charity, it just didn’t spark much interest. So I have decided to err on the side of generosity. I am going to donate all of the shipping and handling money that was paid as well, to help increase what the SFSPCA will be receiving this month. So since my PayPal account was empty at the beginning of these auctions, it looks like the donation will be roughly $335.

That said, I think this is a pretty nice sized donation to make. But seeing that number and knowing that how little some of the shirts sold for, it would have been nice to raise up closer to $500.

So it is only the end of January, but Stacy and I decided to do some elbows-deep spring cleaning on Sunday. We went thru each of our closets, pulled out the items that we don’t wear anymore, and this went into two piles. Goodwill and eBay. Actually only my things went to eBay, and the rest of my stuff and all of her stuff went to Goodwill.

We dropped off two large bags of clothes at the Sunnyvale Goodwill location, and the rest is now bagged up and waiting to bring it over.
Continue Reading

I wrote about eBay in May 2008, and talked about how the company had a lot of issues, specifically with their direction. I mentioned Skype in particular and how much they paid for it, which can also be found in their press release here. Today they announced that they are selling it, and lucky for them getting back what they paid for it, and even keeping at 35% stake in the company.

What is strange is that Jim Goldman on CNBC said they paid “over 1 billion dollars” for Skype. Not sure where he came up with that number.

From an investor standpoint, NOT TECHNOLOGY standpoint, Skype can be looked at as the great-grand daddy of Twitter. It has a ton of potential, a large and growing customer base, but how do you make money with it?

What is clear from this move is that eBay’s vision of Skype never came to fruition and probably never could. Their visions of a grand open market place where a buyer could video chat with a seller with a single click, just isn’t in the cards. It would do wonders for their trust levels, but it just isn’t in the cards.

If I were still an eBay investor, I’d be content to know that the Skype acquisition didn’t turn out to be a big negative, and hopefully the company can re-focus on its core business. Four years of holding onto a company, and dumping it for what you paid for it is a decent situation in these times we are in.