New Year’s Eve

365 days. 246 blog posts. Fifty-one issues. Fifty-two radio broadcasts. Thousands of ads and hundreds of new advertisers. We’ve been pretty busy – it was one heck of a year!

2013 was not only our 45th year in business, it was also the year that brought completely free advertising – as of November 26, 2013 we waived all commission fees, so it’s free to place ads and it costs nothing when you sell; from beginning to end, it’s free of charge. We’ll still have the same customer service reps you’ve come to know – Kim, Bonnie, Kimberly and Jen aren’t going anywhere. And you’re still welcome to come on the air every Saturday morning on Paper Shop Live!; that’s free, too.

We also introduced the PA Lottery Club in June, and it’s been a blast to have 50 weekly chances at winning the Powerball jackpot! The response to the Lottery Club has been incredibly positive, so we’ll keep on bringing you $100 worth of tickets in every issue, every week.

We’d like to thank you for reading along with us this year. It’s been a pleasure to explore the finer points of martial art mannequins, left-handed bathtubs and airplane pants. And we thank you for liking us on Facebook and following us on Twitter.

However you ring in 2014, we’d like to wish you a happy and prosperous new year!

The Web We Weave

… is pretty impressive, if we do say so ourselves.

We understand that some things take time. And adjustment. And, most importantly, feedback. And we’ve spent an incredible amount of time working on an improved and more user-friendly update to our website. We listened to your suggestions for improving your experience with us and we gave a lot of thought to new and exciting features you’d find both useful and enjoyable. We’ll be unveiling the fruits of our labor within the week, and we’d love to hear what you think.

Here are a few of the improvements we’re making:

• Expanded category choices for your advertising
• Easier ad editing options, including the ability to access ads you’re currently running so that it’s simple and seamless to make price changes, add information or fine-tune your wording.
• Share and share alike! You’ll be able to share interesting finds on Facebook, so it’s easy to recommend that used car to a friend who’s looking or to give pal with a new apartment a heads-up on that spiffy leather couch.

Even with all the online improvements we’re making, remember, too, that we’re here for you. We’ll still have the same customer service reps to help you out in any way we can (even if it’s help navigating the new site).

Almanac

On December 19, 1732, Benjamin Franklin began to publish Poor Richard’s Almanack.  And while Old Ben’s almanac is one of the most famous, it was by no means the first. It wasn’t first in America, and it wasn’t even the first such thing to be published by a member of the Franklin clan: Ben’s older brother James began publishing the Rhode Island Almanack in 1727. Even more interesting? James often used the pseudonym “Poor Robin”.

Almanacs have been published for thousands of years. Copies of Babylonian almanacs, complete with lists of lucky and unlucky days (and how to handle each) have been discovered, and the almanac has been a staple in European publishing for centuries. While it’s not an especially common thing to find these days, modern almanacs follow a familiar formula by listing the days of the year along with holidays and other time-sensitive information for the upcoming months (we’re talking about things like tide charts, planting tables and even horoscopes).

We’ve got a soft spot for Ben Franklin, and we like to think that we’re promoters of a number of his philosophies – especially those of personal thrift. It’s our mission to help people sell their unused items and to help others save big bucks on purchasing those items. And now? We do it all for free. It’s completely free to advertise and it costs nothing when you sell. And that? Would make community-minded Ben proud, we think.