I thought I would let everyone know that if you are selling something that you think will sell well on eBay, then it is definitely worth it to use their Featured Plus! feature. It only costs $19.95, and it will put your listing on the first page of the search results when someone searches for your type of item. If you’re lucky, it will be toward the top of the first page. It just depends how many other people have their listing in the featured section. However, based on experience, not many do relative to the total amount of people that list the same item. And it will also list it in the regular listings where it would normally appear. EBay claims that it will increase the amount of bids that you get by 65%, on average. And it seems as though their stats are pretty accurate, as I saw this in action (read below).

Another feature that they claim will increase the final bid by 25% is Highlight feature. This feature adds a purple background to your listing, and only costs an extra $5.

They also have the Bold feature ($1), which bolds the text in your listing, and the Border feature ($3), which puts a blue border around the background of your listing.

Just to give you an idea of how well these features work, I helped a friend of mine sell his very valuable comic book on eBay, and the first day we put it up, it only had received 2 bids within the first two hours, and it was only up to $6.05. So, I suggested that he use all of the features that I mentioned above since the book was worth so much. He agreed.

Literally within 10 minutes there were 4 bids, and the bid had jumped from $6.05 up to $910! The reason for this is that after the above features were added (and you can add them even after you have started the auction), his comic book was added to the top section of the first page with the text bolded, the background color changed to purple, and a blue border placed around the purple background. It really stood out, and was one of the first listings that people saw when they did a search for the type of comic book he was selling. It really blew my mind how fast it worked.

The auction is still going on at the time of this writing, so I can not comment on the number of bids or the final price, but I will update this post when it ends.

But if you do plan on selling something on eBay, do yourself a favor and consider the above features. They really work!

You must have either two hard drives or one hard drive with two partitions to do this.

Outlook Express Users

There is a way to set up your system so if you lose your C drive to a virus, all of your email will still be entact! It’s very easy to set up. Simply do the following:

1. Create a new folder on your Data drive (most likely your D drive); Data drive meaning the drive where all of you files, music, etc. are
2. To create a new folder on your Data drive: double-click on My Computer => double-click on your Data drive => RIGHT-click anywhere on the white part of that window (make sure you don’t highlight another folder) => Select NEW>FOLDER
3. Name the new folder “Outlook Express Email” or just “Email”, whichever you prefer
4. Open up Outlook Express
5. Go to the TOOLS menu at the top of the program and select OPTIONS
6. Click on the MAINTENANCE tab at the top of the window that pops up
7. Click on the STORE FOLDER button
8. Click the CHANGE button
9. Select the folder named “Outlook Express Email” or “Email”, or whatever you decided to name the folder on your Data drive that you just created
10. Click OK, then OK again, then OK again (you will be closing three different windows by doing this)
11. It should show you that it is moving the email to its new location
12. Once it finishes, you are DONE!

Has your computer ever gotten a virus that was so malicious, you had to completely erase your hard drive by reformatting it? And then you had to go through the arduous process of resinstalling your operating system and all of your programs? That was hard enough to deal with, but the real zinger of the whole ordeal was the fact that, if your computer was set up the way most are, you lost all of your data: all of your documents, all of your music, and most importantly to many, all of your email!

Well, there is a way to avoid losing your data to viruses (aside from having an Anti-Virus program installed, running, and up-to-date, of course). This is something that I do to all of the systems that I build. It is simply to partion the hard drive into at least two partitions. In other words, you have one hard drive, but you set it up in such a way that your computer reads it as two hard drives. So, instead of just having the C drive as your entire hard drive where everything is stored (your OS, progams, and data), and the D drive as your CD-ROM, you have the C drive as your first partition (section) of your hard drive that has your operating system and progams on it, and you have the D drive as your second partition, which has all of your data on it (see screenshot below).

(click to enlarge)

You can even set it up so that, if you use Outlook Express to send/receive your email, your email is stored on your D drive as well so you won’t lose your email to a virus!

The thing is, most large PC manufacturers set up their systems with just one partition. And if you want to be able to restore it with the restore CD’s that came with the computer, then you will need to keep it set up that way (this is why I prefer to build my own systems, among many other reasons). You can always reformat the hard drive and set it up the way you want to, but you will risk voiding the warranty if it is still valid.

Actually, some major manufacturers do have the hard drives on their systems set up with two paritions, however, this if for an entirely different reason. The first partition, again, contains everything, and the second partition is strictly for storing the restore files that put your computer back to the way it was when you first got it when you choose the restore option (it takes place of the restore CD’s; HP does this to some of their systems).

However, if you have a computer that was built by someone, or if your warranty is up, then you are free to use this type of setup. All you need to do this is the installation CD for either Windows XP or Windows 2000. Windows 98 users will have to use F-disk to do this.