[DWilds]

Hello Everyone,

I am new to this forum as of today. I have worked as a 40-50 hour a week model maker for the last 20 years. For the last 2 months my company cut me back to 20 hours a week due to lack of work. I am trying to generate freelance work to stay busy and pay the bills. I started an ebay auction explaining my service, but I have only gotten 13 views in the last 3 days. I am posting here to spread the word and build a customer base.

Here is my auction:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200406963796&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:1123

Thank You,
Dave Wilds

 

[tankist]

Hi Dave.
is a strange way you decided to go about this - buying your own stuff from ebay to pay fees. i don't see any buyer and seller protection this way which kinda defeats the only thing that is usable in the evilbay. why do you need ebay in first place?

IMHO, create your own page advertising your services with examples and prices and then refference to it in your posts on forums. your $ per hour figure is useless if you ask me. if i'd be looking for a custom model the only number that i would care about is the actual price (and perhaps date).

good luck with this, does seem like tough thing to find customers amongs ever poor railroad modelers.

 

[DWilds]

I mainly used Ebay for my 100% 254 positive feedbacks to show that I can be trusted. Thanks for the feedback Tankist. Maybe I can change the buyout price based on the quote. I will eventually make a website if there is enough interest.

 

[tankist]

lets say its this way, i will imagine for a second that i'm potential buyer that is loking to buy a particular model.

perhaps i'm not indication of how most users use the bay but here is a short write up:
navigate to HO category, Immediately filter out to "show auctions only". otherwise 300 posts for trees or 'custom pipe load' clutter everything (do those idiots actually think i'll pay 5$ per tree set?). it is at that point i filtered your ad out.
then i sort by time till the end, to see if within next 10 minutes anything of interest ends that i can snipe for. after that i do my usual brand search. anything over 2 days to go usually of no interest to me. and then i search for particular cars i want. i will ad to watch list but will not bid till the last 10 seconds. if i miss at least i'm not spoiling the game to others with my useless bid (since it is not bit for a win).
you see, so within my routine chances for me to find your ad are almost none.

but somehow, by some miraculous circumstance i still stumble upon your ad. there is no picture, there are no examples, there is just couple sentences that can be summarized "trust me, it will be good" and absolutely outrageous price tag. i don't think i'm going to bother contacting you. would you? and then take a look at your ad placement. 27 days to go, 'buy it now' , in "other" category. there are thousands of ads and yours is towards the bottom of the list.

are you still surprised only a few people looked at it?
ebay feedback means nothing to me really.

thats why you need website. not "if there interest" but you need it in order to generate interest.

my 2 cents

 

[Big Ed]

I clicked your link and thought..........what kind of model building for my RR is worth $2500 bucks? Am I missing something?

That kind of money would by a lot of trains.

 

[Southern]

I think most of us here like to bild our own.

 

[glgraphix]

I think what most of us are trying to get you to understand, is that most of us are working class/middle class folks. Most all of us like to build things like building and whatnot for the fun and accomplishment of doing it ourselves. Its part of this hobby, that is known as "the greatest hobby in the world".
I dont think most of us would even consider just from the cost of it, of even bothering you with what "we" would pay someone else to build us a building.
I probably want have 2,500 in my whole layout as a whole when I'm finished, lol.

I hope you see we're not trying to discourage you from what you are trying to do. But understand we just can see putting that much into anything, that we feel we would rather do ourselves anyway, its just part of the FUN.

Kevin