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"I placed my first Hula nodder on eBay in November of 1998. I had been an eBay junkie for a few months, using my husband's computer in the off hours (read 1 a.m.) bidding on rubber stamps and other stuff I was using in my art. I also had a couple of extra hula nodders lying around and I figured I would put them up for bid." So began the metamorphosis of Kim Noland of Half Moon Bay, or the Pesky Mrs N. as she calls herself, into a Dot Com Mom. "Hula nodders are so darned cool. How can it get any better than wiggling dashboard hula girls?" What surprised Kim is that other people shared her quirky, campy sense of humor. "I was the one of the first people to list Hula Nodders on eBay. People snapped them up, got into bidding wars, offered me ridiculous amounts of money to buy these things. I was totally hooked. My husband started getting worried when the first couple of boxes of hula nodders showed up in our living room." Turns out he had good reason: Kim, Peter and Kelly's life had just entered the dotcom twilight zone. The Pesky Mrs. N's Stamps A Hit On EbayKim's involvement with eBay became a full-time business. "I have always been interested in rubber stamps. As a kid I collected them. As an adult I use them in my art projects. I have no interest in the teddy bear and heart stamps that make up the bulk of the stamp business. My interests are in darker, quirkier images." |
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Think of the Pesky Mrs. N as the Andy Warhol of the stamp business
and you get the idea. Her stamps focus on cultural icons as art: M&M
packages, Hitchcock, Captain Kirk, and Elvis. Kim began buying stamps
she loved and selling them via eBay. But she soon grew dissatisfied
with selling other people's work and began designing her own stamps.
Before long, she had more orders than she could handle.
The Art of the eBay SaleKim has mastered the art of selling stuff on eBay. "You learn to list items so that the final flurry of bidding comes on busy weekends. You learn to collect the email addresses of all the high bidders. That way you can contact the losers later on to offer them a deal on the items they lost out on. An automated auction management service can save you tons of time notifying winners, calculating when auctions are completed, and collecting mailing information.Needed a Web SiteKim was beginning to get more orders than she could handle. "It began to become obvious that I needed a Web site where I could offload some of my work. Selling on eBay can be tremendously time-consuming since you are dealing with each customer on a one-to-one basis. A Web site makes it easier to provide information about all your products automatically. It allows customers to look up information on any product that you carry. It saves me a tremendous amount of time in creating and emailing answers to basic questions about my products. Better yet, if a customer likes what they see listed on eBay, they can check out the Web site to see what else I have that strikes their fancy. And when they find a product they have to have, the site takes care of all the paperwork and even accepts payments via credit card. All I have to do is check in daily and ship product out. You can't imagine how much time and effort the Web site saves me."BigStep.comProblem was, Kim didn't know how to go about setting up a Web site. That's when she ran across an article about BigStep.Com.BigStep.com is a new Internet service that offers small businesses tools for developing and running e-commerce businesses. BigStep does not charge a fee for hosting basic sites, hoping to make money later on selling premium services such as site design, billing, or juiced-up marketing. BigStep went on line in July, 1999. By January, 2000, when Noland decided to create her own Web site, BigStep was hosting sites for 30,000 small businesses. She decided to give it a try. The only costs she incurred were the seventy bucks needed to grab the RubberNation.com domain name and $24.95 a month for accepting credit card payments. "It took me two months to design and build my site. The only skills I brought to the task were an intimate understanding of email and some experience using graphics tools. BigStep makes it so easy even my Mom could do it," the ever-modest Mrs. N told us. "I am not saying there have not been problems. My site went live in late March, the same day that BigStep had its first big crash. Can't tell you how many emails I got from frustrated customers. My site was out cold for the first 72 hours of its existence! I got condolence e-mails for three days straight from people trying to buy my stamps. Not the Grand Opening I envisioned! "Things have been flying since with only an occasional hiccup along the way." RubberNation.com currently lists over 200 items, over half of which are of Kim's own design. Of course, you do want to hear about the downside to Noland's success: "My husband has always encouraged me in this endeavor and he likes to say he can't imagine me in a career that is better suited to my personality. His only condition was that he didn't want his house turned into a rubber stamp factory. Sorry Peter! |
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