I’ve finally received my copy of Microsoft Money 2004 Small Business from eBay. I got it for a great bargain price of USD $31.00! I’ve been using Microsoft Money 2003 since 2002. It has been a great tool for me to budget my expenses. Prior to using this software, I have never kept a budget. I didn’t know where my money was coming from and where my money was going to. I realised I had to put a stop to my "ignorance" when my bank account balance went almost ZERO!

With Microsoft Money, I actually got my finances in order. I’ve kept every single receipt for every purchase I made. The spending limits in the budget tool has a "spending thermometer" that looks like a bar chart. If you decide to set a budget of $30 for food expenses per month, it will show you what you’ve spent so far with a bar chart. Take a look at the picture on the right to see what it looks like. This is just one of the visual representations of Microsoft Money.

You can also synchronize your money files on your PDA if you own a Pocket PC or Palm Pilot. There is a free Pocket PC software included in the software package. I’ve seen how my sister use the Ultrasoft Money for Palm Pilot (this one’s not free!) and keep track of her expenses. She’s getting married very soon and she uses this software to keep track of her money wherever she goes.

I just printed out the user guide today. It was a whopping 150+ pages! I haven’t really mastered the new features of the small business edition. The inventory and customer list features would be great boost to my eBay business till I can afford better tools. Now I’ll be able to create a customer database and keep track of my inventory. No more crappy Excel spreadsheets!

This is hands down one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself money wise. My mum’s an accountant and she questions why I count my own money. Its very ironic that my mum spends most of her life counting other people’s money but none of her own!

Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »

I am really excited to receive my 1st few checks for the year 2004! These are checks for the advertisements I run on my other Oasis community site, Oasis Fanatic. I’m able to cover all of my monthly expenses of USD $10 + but as of now, I’m not making enough money to qualify it as a "liveable" income from Oasis Fanatic. My ad revenue is increasing at a steady rate at the moment. Currently at an average of USD $50.00 and above. If I could just sell about 20 shirts a month, that would bring me an additional USD $100.00. I’m just being modest here. I know the numbers can and will be much bigger. I believe I’ll make USD $200.00 or more per month from Oasis Fanatic in the near future and that’s just 1 source of my online income. I’ve got other sources up my sleeve….

I’m coming up with my own brand of t-shirts to be sold through CafePress.com. They’re a company that helps people create their own merchandise for a small fee. I don’t have to maintain any stock or retail levels. They’ll ship the items to my customers 1 at a time! I’ll make a small profit of USD $5.00 per shirt if I sell them at a retail price of USD $19.99!

Its a very cool idea I’m brainstorming with my community right now. We’re thinking of coming up with the most outrageous Oasis quotes ever and pasting them on the t-shirts. I’m really looking forward to this….

Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »

I woke up this morning to an email from "eBay Support" with the following text:

Dear valued eBay member:

It has come to our attention that your eBay billing informations are out of order. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into any future problems with the online service. However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension. Please update your records by April 5th.

Once you have updated your account records your eBay session will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Failure to update will result in cancellation of service, Terms of Service (TOS) violations or future
problems.

To update your eBay records click here:

http://cgi1.ebay.com/aw-cgi/ebayISAPI.dll?UPdate

eBay Update team
http://www.ebay.com

I didn’t think it was anything malicious therefore I followed the URL to the eBay login page. The URL is "http://www.beibay.com/Login.html". I didn’t notice that till I entered my username and password and submitted the form! You know what that means? My username and password is now in the hands of those crooks behind this spoof eBay web site!

Once I reached the eBay form, I knew it was scam right away. First of all, there navigation buttons on top look odd. Secondly, the URL is wrong… what a dead giveaway! Thirdly, the form is asking for way too much information on 1 page that I’ve ever seen on eBay. Lastly, there is no "lock" icon on the browser that indicates this is a secure page.

Ok… I’ve been conned now what do I do?

Thank goodness for eBay’s spoof alert email address at "spo...@ebay.com". You could read about the tutorial on eBay!

I went to change my eBay password and other auction related services that used that password to protect myself. What a way to start my day. Its sad that there are crooks like that trying to rip us off of our money. That’s just a fact of life. Some people would rather cheat you of your money rather than putting a day of honest work.

I’ve received similar spoof emails for my Pay Pal account. You have to be vigilant about these scam artists out there. This is my 2nd eBay scam attempt at me in 2 months! The other one was a phone call asking me to invest thousands of dollars in a coaching program.

Till then, happy and SAFE trading everyone!

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Hello!

Thanks to Square Trade’s dispute settlement service, the buyer that never paid up a few weeks ago has paid up! Cheers! Square Trade is turning out to be a great investment for my eBay business.

Out of my 34 bids at elance.com, I selected Audrie to work on my cartoons of myself. I like her style and she’s also creating an eBay template for me too!

I’m selling some of my vintage computer games. I feel like I am selling a part of myself because I love my Wing Commander games dearly but when I saw that they could sell for over USD $100 ++, what the heck? To hell with the game, I want that money to finance my elance project and my future web hosting fees.

Everything’s seems to moving along as planned at the moment. I’m loving every minute of it!

Categories: Web Design, eBay | No Comments »