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Opened my own store
My software sales have been doing well in the past 12 months which meant that my rate for eSellerate went up (the initial rate is a teaser rate). I could handle the initial rate even though it was a bit steep for the pieces I use, but the new rate was a 50% increase and that really hurt. So on Sunday, I started figuring out how to put up my own store. I looked at a few eCommerce solutions and settled on Zen Cart. I then setup a merchant account with PayPal as it was easy, had decent rates, and I never see the credit card numbers. Today I finally got the pieces together to integrate my registration codes into my store. To make people feel safe, I bought an SSL certificate (a wildcard one). I really didn't need one as I don't see credit card numbers, but I think it was worth the investment. There is still more work to be done to the store, but I think it is good enough for now. So without further ado, I present my web store.
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10.4.9 is like a rock!
For the most part, Mac OS X has been solid and reliable. However, there are times when I have to restart. Recently my machine wouldn't always wake from sleep requiring me to power cycle it; I don't shutdown my machine all that often, but opt to sleep it so it wakes faster. I saw this a lot under 10.4.8 and it also seemed to occur when I unplugged my machine from my external monitor, keyboard, etc. With 10.4.9, I'm quite happy to say that I haven't seen any of that. Some apps have crashed, but I haven't had to restart my machine.
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Whoa...Sprint actually came through!
I'm now through a few billing cycles with Sprint after the guy at the Sprint store mucked with my account. As I posted before, I got 4 additional lines (and phones) and my bill was supposed to drop by about $20 per month. Low and behold, it actually has (it takes a few billing cycles to work out the plan changes)! So I have 4 phones sitting on the shelf doing nothing. I probably could get a few bucks more off per month (one discount I have wasn't applied to 4 lines), but I'm not going to sweat it. I would also have liked free mobile to mobile calling on all lines (there are 10 on my account and only 5 have mobile to mobile), but since we don't go over our minutes, it isn't a problem. I did have to sign up for another 2 year contract, but that's minor as I don't see switching off Sprint any time soon; coverage is good for me (and my family) and they finally have phones that I like (my wife and I have the Motorola Razr V3m). You might be asking why I have 10 lines on my account; 4 lines are idle (phones on my shelf), one used by me, 1 by my wife and the other 4 by my family members. They get a sweet deal piggybacking off my account, but I don't mind as long as we're under our allotted minutes.
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Success with Amazon affiliates
When I started ReceiptWallet back in October, I thought that it was a good idea to become an Amazon Affiliate and point people to scanners and collect a little money off the referrals. It turns out I was right. While I can't retire off the 4-6% that Amazon pays me for each sale, it's still a little money in my pocket. The DocketPORT 465 is one of the top sellers as that's a scanner I recommend for ReceiptWallet. If I could sell the DocketPORT myself, I could make a little more money, but then I'd have to deal with inventory, returns, questions, etc. One problem with the affiliate system is that if I personally buy anything, I don't get credit for it which is understandable. Oh well.