November 18, 2015

Resolving a Negative Feedback on eBay

About once a year, I get dinged with a negative feedback on eBay. Fate swooped in on my 34th birthday and dispensed me one just yesterday and I figured that I should post about how I resolved it. Math up front. On average I sell 15-20 items per week and though I leave feedback for all my buyers, I usually receive a 10% return feedback as a seller and am luckily still running at a 100% positive. I offer free shipping (which I bundle into the Buy it Now price) and 14 day returns on all my items which gets me into Top Rated/Powerseller status and that fly final value…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ecommerce, online sales

October 28, 2015

Free Reporting Tool for Ebay, Etsy and More

Just a quick post here. A few months ago, when I started getting back into the eBay flipping game I wanted to have a visual report to identify trends and show sales progress for free. The solution I ended up going with is called SumAll. SumAll is pretty cool in that you can plug all kinds of online engagement/sales channels into one interface and track trends for free. Of course they offer a paid suite that is probably super rad though for my activity that isn’t warranted. Check out the screen shot of the “Classic View” below which shows my last 12 months of activity on eBay, Etsy, YouTube &…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ecommerce, online sales

October 11, 2015

First 100.00 on Etsy!

About a month and a half ago, encouraged by my buddy I launched a new shop on Etsy.com. I had a shop on Etsy years ago attempting to sell vintage prints from scanned slides. I had no sales there and after 6 months, I closed that situation down. The focus of this shop, much like that of my friend Josh was vintage men’s clothing with a keen focus on trucker hats. I got into selling hats on eBay a couple months before opening the Etsy shop because: People buy second hand hats (I wouldn’t have thought unless it was something super special) Most hats weigh under 13oz. and with ship via…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ecommerce, online sales

August 22, 2015

Eden Park Hike & Testing the Sony Nex-3N

I think the last time I went backpacking was in 2001, hitting a piece of the AT in North Jersey when I was working as a camp counselor for the Stony Brook Watershed. The opportunity came up this August here in Portland to head to the North Side (aka, non burning side) of Hood for a bit of a hike in and night out in the back country. Not at all inclined to add the SLR & lenses to the already 30lb frame pack, I trolled Craigslist and ended up with a very reasonably priced (230.00) Sony Nex-3N with the Sigma Art 30mm 2.8 lens, Lowepro belt case and a…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in camera, digital, digital photography, nature, oregon, photography, portland

August 9, 2015

Lessons learned from my failed e-commerce startup

When Jenna and I were living in Pennsylvania, we frequented the oddball grocery stores in the Philly suburbs always looking for something new. One of the more interesting spots was the West Norriton Farmers Market. More of a grocery store than a farmers market with a geographic layout, this place has an interesting selection to say the least. I’ve always been into hot peppers, and the Caribbean and African section of the store had some tempting/daring products to offer. One of these was the best dried pepper product I’ve ever tasted. That product (2 cases of which are still in my closet) became the template for an e-commerce shop called…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ecommerce, online sales

March 8, 2015

1 year later.

A year has completed and I’m wrapping up my Daily Photo Project. 57 of 365 days spanning 2014 & 2015 were photographed and posted, can’t say I really stuck with the plan. The hardest part about writing this is that I love just about all of the mediocre photos shot, edited and posted over the year. Thinking about what I missed on those 308 days as mundane as many were makes the blog that much harder to look at. Personal projects are hard, I knew that when I started this. I slipped enough times to just, be OK with it, kept letting it go until it stopped crossing my mind…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in wasting pixels

March 23, 2014

Phoenixville Vignette

Untitled from Justin Hawthorne on Vimeo. I finally got around to stringing these clips together. All of these were shot in my first year of living in Phoenixville, 2012. Nothing special, just a little vignette.

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in phoenixville, phone photography, video

March 3, 2014

New Project

Things have been pretty slow over the last year, so to speed them up, I started a new photo project.

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in Uncategorized

January 2, 2014

Phoenixville Firebird Festival 2013

Once again, the best festival in town has come and gone. This years Firebird Festival took place in a new location, on the North Side of Phoenixville during a snow/ice storm. The weather was completely terrible, heavy snow turning to freezing rain covered the beautiful bird with a pale glaze which was no match for the inferno which it quickly became. Here’s some pics!          

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in photography