This weeks roundup:

Classes, classes!

Tuesday Dany Byrne, Product Development Specialist at the websellerscircle, Janelle Elms visionaire from OSIrockstars.com, and I gave our first in the “moving outside of eBay”  classes.  It was an amazing class on the power of building a business plan, the perfect place to open the series.

I also had the pleasure of interviewing Sharon Ware, eBay Certified Store Designer and Business consultant from Dandelion Consulting. She showed us around eBay stores and gave us some valuable tips on how to maximize your eBay store branding. The video will be up in the membership area soon. (Remember access is still free – so join and watch as soon as you can).

I also had a chance to interview the wonderful Jamie Parkins from Vzaar.com. He showed us around – including how simple it is to add a video to eBay, blog and other websites. The vzaar video service will give your auctions, websitess and blog posts a professional look. Another great benefit to the Vzaar player; no links to direct viewers off your page at the end of the video, like YouTube does. Again, the interview will be up in the membership area soon. I highly recommend you check it out – video is the next big thing on the net and as a seller you don’t want to be left behind.

I’ve been playing phone tag with Phaedra Stockstill Owner/http://www.bonanzle.com/attheboutique and Ecommerce Educator and co-host of http://brainstormingbonanzle.com - she’s a Bonanzle expert – we finally had a chance to talk. What a wonderful conversation we had. I’m pretty excited about the BonanzleUps - they sound like a blast. I hope you can make it to one. She also agreed to show us more about using Bonanzle, including the batch editor sometime in April.

Dany and I  talked to David at membergate.com and got the low down on hosting videos and setting up the membership area. I’m getting pretty excited. We’ll be running the latest version of the membergate software that has advanced Web 2.0 functions. The forums will be very easy to navigate, member bios will function much the way they do on facebook and the member area is going to be simple and clean for easy navigation. Plus, we’ll finally have an easy way to have affiliates, something I’ve had many requests for but its been hard to accommodate.

That’s most of what I managed to do along with packing and shipping (sales seem to be picking up again), blogging, consulting with a favorite client and preparing taxes. 

Hope you have a great weekend.

The good – the best – LOL, the most exciting thing!

Today the ‘page proofs’ for The eBay Marketing Bible arrived. Page proofs are essentially the xeroxed pages of the book that Cliff & I re-read to make sure everything was put into proper place after the last round of edits. This is our first peak of how the book will actually look. Before now, it’s been a bunch of word documents with heading and formatting tags.

So, it really feels like reality now. After months of writing and collaboration it’s come together. WooHOO! 

Of course, the first thing I had to look at was the screen captures of all the eBay stores we used – and they look great. I can’t thank everyone enough for letting me use their eBay stores for examples. Now, I have to go back and read the words…

I had a fantastic interview and learned a lot about Vendio – Michael and Dan were great. Vendio.com has a lot of automation tools that will make a cross channel sellers life much easier – plus their new store. If you want to learn more the screencast is available now in the membership area.

The other stuff, not so great…

I think schools are having a heck of a time with enrollment due to the current economic climate.

This week I had two classes canceled due to lack of enrollment – an eBay Business class and an Online Basics class.

Not sure why, I would have thought people would be investing in learning to keep a competitive edge.  I also lost a big contract because the school lost funding. It was one of my most lucrative gigs – drat!

The Good

Cliff Ennico and I sent in the final round of major edits on The eBay Marketing Bible - now the book is put together and we get one final look at it before it goes to press. Release date June 2009. Yahoo!!!!!! I am so happy to have it mostly ‘in the bag’ It has been a big project. I want to say Cliff was THE BEST to work with. I couldn’t have been luckier to co-author this book with him.

It’s looks like eBay “almost live’ in Las Vegas this June is a go. The dates are not set yet, sometime late in the month. eBesty asked if I’d like to talk about photography, so looks like I have a good excuse to go play in Vegas baby

The Bad

Well, really not to much went wrong this week – although I am staring at the most intimidating questionnaire from Amacom’s PR department. I have to get it completed soon.