A recent article in Wired Magazine Where Have All the Girl Scout Cookies Gone? Check eBay | Epicenter from Wired.com had me thinking about selling cookies on eBay as a means to reach a wider audience.

While I love eBay as a tool for reaching buyers worldwide, I’m not sure this is the ideal place for selling cookies that I make as part of my home business. Sure, I would love the additional business, but the perception of eBay as a place to find great deals and hard-to-find products is probably not the ideal way to frame your own cookie business. Yes, my cookies are one-of-a-kind, but part of what I strive to do in my business is establish local relationships — as a contributing member of my community. For me, eBay becomes too anonymous to achieve this goal.

A website, on the other hand brings up a whole set of other issues that I will cover in later posts.

Happy baking.

Where Have All the Girl Scout Cookies Gone? Check eBay  Billions of dollars in commerce have moved online, but the Girl Scouts of the USA still strongly discourages its scouts — or their parents — from selling cookies on the internet.

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For this Mom in OHIO, Cookies And Kids Are Her Recipe For Success

Ohio.com:

Kristin Gambaccini knows it’s all about presentation when you’re trying to sell a product, and her cookies are no exception. The 25-year-old Akron mother of three is the owner of The Cookie Mama, a local licensed home bakery that’s been in business for four months. She said the name came from her 8-year-old son, who always calls them ”my mama’s cookies.” She and her husband, Ed, also have a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old.

Gambaccini said she started baking as a child. ”It was the one thing I knew I was allowed to do in the kitchen without any questions.” She said she started with one basic sugar-cookie recipe but added twists throughout the years to develop her own. Since her family prefers chewy cookies, that’s what she makes instead of the crunchy ones. ”I know my cookies are good, but I’m not good at decorating them. Baking has always been my thing, but putting fancy frosting and decorations on the things I baked was not my forte.”

Her husband said it was the numerous calls his wife received from family and friends asking her to bring her cookies to every gathering that made him suggest selling them. ”When he suggested I start selling them, I just laughed,” Kristin Gambaccini said. ”Yeah, right, I’m going to sell cookies because I don’t have anything else to do.” But she said she could tell he was serious. ”Everyone loves her cookies, and they’re the best I’ve ever had,” her husband said. ”So I thought, let’s try it, why the heck not, and it would bring in a little more income without her giving up time with the kids.” Kristin Gambaccini said the more she thought about it, she liked the idea. ”It was something I wanted to do for me. It’s just me and the kids a lot at home so I don’t have a lot of social time,” Kristin Gambaccini said. ”I wanted something flexible that I could do when the kids were napping or asleep at night. Something that didn’t place a lot of limitations on me with the kids and something that would be up to me as to where I wanted to go with it.”

Her family is a good taste barometer. ”I’m the guinea pig; when she tries variations on her recipes I get to try them first,” Ed Gambaccini said. ”I give her the thumbs up or thumbs down. She will let her mother or a friend taste them next, but she is too self-critical to go with her own taste buds; nothing is ever good enough.”