As I peruse the net, I found a couple sites that might interest you if you haven't heard about them yet. I'm usually the last person to ever find anythings, so I wouldn't be surprised if everyone knows about these. :)
On our local Fox station, they had a little report about furnishing an entire apartment for free. They took a single mom & her teenage daughter who were living in a close-to-empty apartment. The Fox station perused 2 sites to find all the furniture & accesories. The first website they used was Freecycle, which I have talked about before. The second site they used was Cragislist. They actually did a decent job furnishing the little place for these people.
Craigslist is a great ad-free site that can give you a ton of info. When you click on this link, it'll take you to the San Francisco area listings, but most major cities are listed on the right hand side, so that you can see your own local listings.
You can find things for free, for sale, job listings, & you can list things yourself. Kind of like a garage sale on line. :)
Here's a little history about this site (from the site):
Craig Newmark observed people on the Net, on the WELL and in Usenet, helping one another out. In early '95, he decided to help out, in a very small way, telling people about cool events around San Francisco like the Anon Salon and Joe's Digital Diner. It spread through word of mouth, and became large enough to demand the use of a list server, majordomo, which required a name.
Craig wanted to call it "sf-events", but more knowledgeable friends suggested calling it "craigslist" to reinforce its personal and down-to-earth nature. He still finds it awkward that such a visible site is named after him, but he'll get over it.
Over time, people started posting items on the list in different areas, jobs, stuff for sale, and apartments, the latter in response to San Francisco's apartment shortage. Craig wrote software which could automatically add email postings to a site which became www.craigslist.org.
After being approached toward the end of '97 about running banner ads, he decided to make craigslist non-commercial. Some things should be about money, some shouldn't, and I make enough doing contract programming." He was joined by other folks who proposed running face-to-face parties to make the sense of virtual community more physical, and who proposed creating a nonprofit foundation as part of craigslist.
Craig devoted himself full-time to craigslist in early 1999.
A lot of HR people and recruiters tell us that craigslist is the most effective job site in the San Francisco Bay Area... and now a February 2000 Forrester report confirms this.
OK, here's the second site, that I just discovered this week. Since, I do Home & Garden Party on the side, I was excited to see this, but it could be used by anyone. The United States Postal Service offers you a chance to creat letters, brochures, or postcards, have them published, & sent out at a very low cost. Here's the link to it. If you do Christmas letters, or any "bulk" type mailings (birth announcements, wedding announcements, etc.), this is a great way to go! They have templates already in place for you to save as your own & use, so there's no need to figure out your own margins & stuff. I know many of you do at home businesses, so this can be a great marketing tool. After you create your document (the hardest part!), you download it to their site, approve it, and voila!, it should be sent out within 24-48 hours. You can get estimated pricing which includes the printing fee & postage.
Just thought I would share these little finds.
6 comments:
Great hints, Pam! We actually got our changing table through our local Freecycle website, and my brother has gotten stuff from Craigslist before. I'll definitely be checking out the Post Office link, too! Thanks!
Hey dear, thanks for the tips. I have already discovered both of these sites but haven't used them too much since we've been here in Ohio. Wow, that post office bulk mailing thing sounds too good to be true!
Btw, I've always viewed your blog in firefox and it's always looked just fine.
My sister Janelle has bought and sold stuff on Craig's List; it sounds like a great way to go! And I've heard about Freecycle; I'll have to check it out some time - maybe to get rid of stuff though. I'm not supposed to accumulate things for the next five years. (Like that'll happen.)
Jenny, That's great about your changing table! Free is the best price.
Alicia, Don't worry, it wasn't Firefox, just my computer acting up.
Katie, Know what you mean about stuff! Ours is adding up & starting to drive me crazy. "If only I had more storage" is constantly going through my mind as I try to organize!
Pamela: your link to the conley clan is broken. Thought you'd like to know!
Thanks Pamela!! I was just starting to do Kevins monthly mailing...I am going to try the USPS link...I will let you know how it goes! Thanks again!! I can do it all from my computer and not have to run out to the copy store then to the postoffice to get stamps and then stamp them all and label them and then back to the postoffice...I am so excited to try this!!!
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