Ok, I'm not much of a business woman myself, but one of the things I do keep in mind is that if you want to sell things, you do want as many people as possible to buy them? Don't you?

Well, so far I guess that if you want to do (online) business, I consider it more than fair that your (potential) costumers get options to pay, so they can pay you. That is why many shops accept next to cash, electronic payment, coupons and whatever.

I presume an online business would be the same. No, seems like many, mainly American companies only accept credit card. Ok, I do believe an American without a credit card is something like a pub with no beer and I agree that if they only ship to their own country and not international, that all is fine.

But some companies do ship international and I think that if you do ship international, you should know your public. Costums can vary indeed. Europeans are not keen on spending money they don't have, so ... not credit card minded and you are not likely to get one here in my country, since banks aren't keen on them either.

So many Europeans don't have credit cards. Many smart American companies noticed and also accept alternatives like Paypal, that since recent days is also available for Europeans without credit card.

*Sigh* What a relief would you say! No, not really. Some companies, like Ficcare, Cafepress and so on still only give their international costumers only credit card option. And when you find a Belgian friend with a credit card, still it is not good, because they can't validate it in an American system.

And most recently I discovered and even more stupidity and I think I understand why the US remains in a crisis. Turns out you can only validate your Paypal account if you are costumer of an American bank.

Recently bought something on Ebay from an American seller who accepts Paypal, ships internationally and combines shipping. What do you get? He doesn't accept payment from an unvalidated account, while with unvalidated European accounts, you can be bloody shure that it is money that is tranferred from a bank account to a paypal account and not something virtual as with credit cards.

So: the sale was cancelled. No stuff for me, but also no sell for the seller, who is already paying eBay. His loss for his stupidity.

Now I do have to say: I'm not attacking Americans here, since I hold nothing against them and even consider many as friends, but I'm only questionning the stupidity of large companies that complain they make a lot of money but they want more and leave options aside, because they don't know their public.

1) If I can't find a suitable job, I might go back to college. Already know what I want to study and ordered the info.

2) Stay positive. I might have failed on several things in the future, but I do believe in myself more than ever today.

Well, I've been way too quiet online. I know. My life is complete hell right now, like I'm watching this movie with things that always seems to happen to others.
But I finally can admit it: for years I've been dominated by my husband. I loved him so much it didn't feel like that. He beated me, but I forgave and blamed myself, knowing I can be hard on somebody as well.
So I tried to change, but my husband didn't. Not for the good. He totally neglected me, when I tried to talk to him, he always said things to me that hurt me real bad.
At the end he became more and more violent. I didn't only took the hits and the brooses, he also tried to choke me several times. It really hurts knowing I loved somebody that tried to kill me. I don't feel safe around him anymore.
But here I am: a housewife. No income of my own. Staying with my mother. I can't even get to the papers I need for an official divorce, since he keeps them away from me in a cupboard behind 3 locks and I don't have the keys.
I always hated being a housewife, but after not getting a job and not being able to get a degree, I came to turns with it.
The only reason I endured so much pain, were my pets. I still hope to find a place where I can keep them safe. If the house has to be sold they don't have a place to stay. I love them too much to give up, but my psycopathic husband won't even clean litter boxes.
So I only survive because of my mother, hoping to get away from my worst nightmare and find a good home for my pets.

Also I just found out that my husband registred himself to a dating site. This means I'll be back to dating as well.

I've been a bit quiet here. I know and I actually haven't been doing much, both on as offline. Time to get back in action.

That is what I'm asking myself as well. I've been ill for about two months. My emotions are simply killing my health. Things are changing inside me.
I don't know how to explain. Since I was a kid I always knew I had psychic abilities. Every time I try to ignore my path, things work out wrong for me.
I feel really miserable for the moment. The only thing I always wanted was to help others and now I feel like breaking apart myself. None of my wishes ever came true, or not how I wanted them.

Well, I find it hard to price my own work, but since I love making hairsticks, I will sell my overdo work.

I've put some on eBay. After calculating a while, I decided to price them low, so people can bid on them. If people just want them, I'll price them higher. I might add a "buy it now", but I'll just see how they will go.

Here you can see my listings:

http://search.benl.ebay.be/_W0QQsassZkeltia_77

For those interested: happy bidding. I do ship international and accept paypal.

I might list more in the future. First I wanted to give up on eBay, but I might give it another try.

Oké, this does not make sense and it does not have to, as far as I guess.

I've been thinking a bit. Yeps, I'm stuck with a badly twisted foot that kills me when I try walking on it. The positive thing is that it is raining the second day on a row and getting outside does not seem a brillant idea anyhow, although I do like to.

On the other hand: what is outside? Streets filled with shops and malls. 1001 ways to spent your money. Heum, I guess that is it.

The more I think about it, the more I get a feeling that what once was a great tool for trading is becomming the ultimate tool of power. You can have everything, of you can afford it.

You can even buy people, as far as I've heard. Well, slavetrade is officially forbidden, but still I wonder. Aren't we all slaves? Don't we all do our jobs to get that one thing we need to fullfill most of our desires?

Everything has a price tag and I guess most people are not willing to give it to you for anything else. Try to get a free icecream, for example. I wonder if they will give you one, unless you are a celeberty, that can afford buying all bystanders one. You can mock at all icecreamsellers, but be reasonable. If they give you one for free, nobody is going to be willing to pay for one and if that poor guy has to give it all away, he'll be out of business soon.

Still I miss the old days that were way before my birth, when the butcher would trade his meat for bread with the baker. I can see myself walking into a store, holding up a selfmade thing and asking if I can trade it for something else, like : "Shoemaker, can you fix me a new pair of boots for next winter? I'll knit you a new sweater."

I do love getting back into trading things, rather than buying and selling from time to time.

Now the strange thing is: everything is industrialised and the only ones that can still afford the work of artisians, are those who got them out of business in the first place.

People have become production tools and the machine is taking over at lower cost where possible. Still I think industrials will cut themselves at long term, since they will fire employees for cheaper production and to get more money. This will work for a while, but at the end there will be soo many people unemployed, that there is simply no more money to be sucked out. The system of social security, especially the one I got in my country, will make there cheap move, more costly at the end.

Why? More unemployement, means that the rates to make social security affordable, must go up for those who are still working. At the end the bosses do pay the unemployed too, simply for staying alive and gazing at there products, but being not able to buy them, since they have become more expensive.

So factories who think they are working cheap by cutting on wages and working with as few employees as possible, are actually working expensive, except that they don't get it.

And those who get it, are moving their factories to places where there is less social security and were people can work low cost. The only problem is those countries evolve to and in a couple of decades, they might have unions, schools and a social system as well. We must not forget that less than two centuries ago, our people were living in the same conditions as many of those low cost workers in the Third world are today.

Meaning: capitalists can run, but not forever. The system will collapse worldwide one day, same as communism did in the East.

And then? Then we might just get back to respecting each other's work and consider each other as equal trade partners and not as objects to be bought, sold and dumped whenever it pleases the people with the most money, who still want more.

I just published my new novel on Lulu. It's in Dutch, my native language, but here you can find it. I got a soft and a hard cover version of the book:

http://www.lulu.com/content/2587560 

http://www.lulu.com/content/2641927