Customers are different. One likes everything all tight and businesslike, another wants to be your new best friend. Versatility is called for. If your profile includes psychological quirks, remember that a limitation is not to be cherished, but challenged and overcome. If you hate math, now might be a good time to outgrow that. The trader's way requires many different skills, and it's always good to pick up every trick you can

In her memoir, a Russian woman tells how she once read a novel that described the convicts' tapping code, and she learned it just for fun. Years later, this woman woke up one day alone in a cell in one of Uncle Joe Stalin's prisons. Along a metal pipe came the sound of tapping, a lifeline to sanity. The ability to ask and tell, to simply communicate, saved her from mental disintegration.

Every increment of knowledge counts for something. The strongest rope is knit from many strands. Way too often, trying to make something work, we fool around with it, try one thing, try something else, cuss and fume, and finally we give up and unfold the instructions - and make some progress. Okay, not always, but often enough to make us suspect there might be something to it. Listing stuff on the auction site, the same thing happens: the RTFM factor comes into play. We can call upon our major human survival trait, adaptability, and Read The Freakin' Manual. It's true on the auction site, just like in real life.

You go through times when nothing works, your magic is down, the world withholds cooperation. Nobody bids on your auctions or buys any of your fixed-price stuff or anything out of your online store. Your ship of commerce is becalmed, in fact it's dead in the water. Hang in there. Far and near, your luck is gathering its forces. It's out there readying itself to meet up with you and make something happen that'll knock your socks off.

Attitude matters. And not the kind of attitude personified by fashion models and hip-hop stars. Somehow that perfectly good word got co-opted and twisted into meaning "bad attitude." But no. Your attitude is the stand you take on life, the sum of all the things you assume and take for granted and decide your actions on the basis of. And it's one of the most important things to catch on to, in this journey from cradle to grave. The only people who think attitude doesn't matter, are the ones with a lousy attitude. What you get from life matches the quality of your contribution. Garbage in, garbage out. As the great sage Jerry Jeff Walker reminds us "Life is mostly attitude and timing." And so is offering merchandise on the auction site.

There are discussion boards, interest groups, little clubs for people who like the same kind of thing - old fabrics, art nouveau collectibles, trains, whatever. I hang out at the booksellers. Like the real world, there are some generous folks who know a lot, who want to help and to give. Information wants to be free, and should be, as long as it's voluntary. It's an excellent idea to locate these gurus and sit at their feet - just like real life.

On the boards, people write in about the site's latest glitch. An important page is missing. The bill came, and they're being overcharged. The bureaucrats invent a new stupid rule. If it's not happening to you, you can be philosophical and stern. "The auction site doesn't owe anyone a living. You shouldn't have quit your day job." When the site's software malfunction affects your own operations, it's "Damn lousy customer service....those people need to get their act together." It's all a matter of whose ox is being gored. Just like real life.

Nobody has all the answers, and some don't want to have any. There are trolls who delight in argument and insult, who live to tattle, or pick nits, and see how much damage they can do for the pure ornery hell of it. The deepest human need may be the need to make a difference. The inadequate, unable to make a positive difference, are unblushingly eager to make a negative one. Just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean they're not out to get you. It's good to exercise a healthy caution when dealing with a stranger. There are crooks and con artists aplenty, just like real life.

When you run a store on the auction site, there are all kinds of fancy trimmings available: featured auctions, banner ads, paid keywords. Again, like real life, you don't need very much stuff - if it's the right stuff. Define your goal as nearly as you can, and then refine it more. Prioritize. Herd those ducks into a row. Keep your tools in order. If you can't find something, the result is exactly the same as if you never had it in the first place: you need it, and it's not there. God is in the details, and the devil is too.

Don't pretend to be what you're not, or know more than you do.

Don't expect anyone to be any more honest than you are. Why should they?

When a thing is important, fight for it. If you don't win, let it go. Life is not fair. Get over it.