American Idol Season 12

Since "American Idol" first started in 2002, I watched every year until season 8. I couldn't watch season 9, 10 and 11, because I was busy. This year, I started watching the show again. When I think about the first show when Kelly Clarkson won, there were many shaky performers in top 10, but as the popularity of the show grows, the level of singers in the competition went up. Yesterday was "sudden death" of first group of 10 male singers, but cutting half of these great singers must be a difficult thing. I guess they have to consider the style, looks, stage presence and performance, so not every good singer could get in, but I was surprised to see that they let J'DA go. I thought he was the best overall performer in yesterday's group. Well, I'm not a musician, so I guess I didn't see what they saw. My guess for this season is "Angela Miller" to win. We'll see.

Over the years, there are many people who won the competition. I don't know why some of the winners are kind of gone and you never hear again. They got so much votes from people in order to win, so they must be popular, so why? Some of my favorites that I don't hear about are Fantasia and David Cook. I don't hear about Kris Allen either. Probably they are doing fine as artists, but they are just not that much "out there".

Let's see how this season goes and if the winner or any of top 10 would become someone to be remembered many years later.

Selling on eBay

I have been using eBay for buying things for a while. First time I bought something from China or Hong Kong, I was afraid that shipment might not arrive on time or I was afraid that the seller could cheat me. Of course I checked the feedback rate and most of them are over 99%, but then I read about a few people who didn't receive the item. Now I have quite a few sellers who are my favorite and I buy from them repeatedly.

Recently, I decided to sell on eBay for the first time. I was afraid if they would charge me a lot and I could lose money instead of making. It says "first 50 auction style listings are free for each calendar month". So I decided to list 50 auction style items at the end of January. However when I listed 10, it says "you have reached the limit for this category for this month". O.K., so you can list 50 items for free, but if you list items in more than one category they would charge me, so basically I could only list 10 items for free each month. So I waited until February 1st, to see if I could list another ten, but unfortunately they still say that your maximum for the category is reached. It was because my items aren't ending yet. Then I waited for my auction to end. My auction just ended on February 4th. I sold three of them, and not sold seven of them. Now I thought I could list another ten, but it let me list only 7 items. Somehow they count "sold" item as listing.

So basically you can sell ten auction items on eBay in a month at the most for free. You have to pay for the paypal fee for receiving a payment, and you have to pay the final value fee to eBay, too, so you will lose quite a lot of money by selling on eBay. Since only ten items are allowed, you should list something a bit more expensive than 99 cents. The problem is that when the price is higher, less likely to be bought by people, unless what you are selling is very good price.

I guess you can't make a business selling on eBay.