Sunday, September 28, 2008

1989 Fleer Billy Ripken F%%% Face Error #616A

This eBay item is the infamous Bill Ripken 1989 Fleer baseball card with the "error." The story behind this was that as a practical joke, the words "F*** Face" were written at the bottom of several team baseball bats, and supposedly nobody caught on the "error" until it was printed.

Several revisions had black bars and white out marks covering up the offending words, and now it's a sought after collector's item.

History repeats itself again with the release of All Star Batman and Robin #10, which features a significant amount of adult language, but is blacked out. Unfortunately, the ink used for the lettering was darker than the ink for the black out, rendering the offending text completely legible. The error was caught, and retailers were asked to return the offending copies. Of course, they're now on eBay.

74 results found for slingbox

Despite the fact that TV ratings are down for top shows, Slingbox technology remains a relatively hot property on eBay. While 74 results isn't a huge number of items, what's notable is the number of bids on each. Looking at the page, the vast majority of the items have bids on them.

Slingbox allows the user to watch television broadcast programming from their television, although I wonder why...the aftermath of the writer's guild strike has had a very negative effect on television ratings, as the formerly top rated show Heroes ends up losing to Dancing With the Stars (which doesn't rely on WGA writers).

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

EMPLOYMENT WEBSITE - Profitable AdSense Job Finder Site

If you're looking for jobs in Boston...keep looking. However, looking for job-seeking stuff on eBay will dig up an employment website. As the dot.com bubble has long since burst, domains squatting isn't as profitable as it once has been. And, I know that making money off of ad clicks is nowhere near as easy as they say it is. Books have been written about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and it's not an exact science.

I still remember when I was working for an electronics retailer and was trying to determine value of keywords in Google AdSense. They were trying to push discounted DVDs and I was finding that certain words carried more weight than others (obviously), so certain ones were more expensive to click on, but we had a budget.

18,247 results found for car covers

One particular item on eBay that will yield a lot of hits - car covers. I guess it's not exactly a growth industry, especially since a lot of people have been parking their cars lately, as you look at the list and there's a string of 0 bids running down the side. Well, if you go into car seat covers, then sure, there's a listing for Eddie Bauer Seat Covers and it's got 8 bids on it, but that's more of a necessity than something to cover your car. If you drive a nice car, you more than likely have access to covered parking.