This will have to be the last entry under “Getting Started”, since we’ve already started.  But it seems like a good place to write about what we will write about later … we’re not the New York Times or even the South China Morning Post so you probably shouldn’t expect late-breaking news.  Over time (lots of it) we will cover things like how cards get entered, sourcing, categories, pricing, grading, customers’ stories, and various things we have to deal with–questions, complaints (yes, it happens), and so on.  As they say, watch this space.

People do ask:  why have a website at all?  Why not just use eBay or one of the big postcard consolidator sites.  Good question.  That would probably be easier in the long run, and almost certainly cheaper.  But in a way it is like taking a private company and going public.  These other, larger selling sites all have their own rules and regulations, most of which we could live with but from time to time it’s nice to keep control over formats, shipping charges, and things like that.  Then people (we know some smart people!) say:  but nobody will be able to find you on the web if you don’t advertise.  The search engines won’t pick you up.  That’s partly true.  Unless we paid an arm and a leg to a search engine optimization firm, we are unlikely ever to be top-page in Google with a phrase like “Malaysian Postcards.”  We’d like to be, but it doesn’t happen no matter how we put key words in the right places.  Still, and slowly, the more specific the search term, the more likely we are to turn up.  Much more on this later.  We have a section in the administrative part of the website that tells us exactly which terms people used to search and wound up bringing them to us.

So we won’t be saying a whole lot that the competitors don’t already know.  They have their own methods, anyway.

About Subscribing to this blog.  We couldn’t think of a better word, mostly because “Unsubscribe” is such an easy opposite term, unlike “Sign Down” or “UnSign Up”.  We want people to know they don’t need to pay to subscribe, and they don’t have to buy anything.  But if they want to, we won’t stop them 

In the next entry, we’ll get down to business.  Thanks for reading!