Mega Blog Contest

Welcome to my very first Mega Blog Contest Post!

To enter, leave a comment by 8:00pm on March 8, 2009.

You are entering to win your choice of either a white fire opal ring, or a solid men's tungsten ring.

To see further details on these items and more, click here.

All entries will be compiled on March 9, and winner will be chosen randomly.

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to join my list of followers!

How to Buy a Lasting Piece of Jewellery

Take a look at this opal ring. Beautiful, isn't it? It's the sort of thing a person might give for a special occasion, or maybe even as a modern twist on a wedding band.

When buying such a thing, it is intended that the item will be a lasting symbol of an eternal sentiment.

One thing to look for in such an item is the use of rhodium as a plating.

Rhodium is a precious white metal from the platinum family. It costs roughly 8 times more than pure gold, and 4 times more than platinum.

The main benefit of plating an item with rhodium, is the extra durability it provides. In fact, it is now a common practice to plate fine white gold with rhodium.

And let's not forget the gorgeousness factor. The appearance of rhodium is arguably even more beautiful than white gold.

And that is why modern quality items, like the one pictured above are more and more likely to feature rhodium as an add on.

Now you know.

Manly Tungsten Rings & Pretty Things

Well looky here. I finally made my first set of business cards for And Shine. Many times in the past few months, I was embarassed to admit that I don't have one. I was under the impression that it would be difficult and expensive to make them seeing as graphic designers always made them at places I worked previously, and it often seemed like quite a production to get them going.

*Update* This wasn't meant as a dig at anyone I worked with in the past. hahaha. What I meant to say was that it seems the more people that are involved in the creative process, the more complicated and bumpy the outcome :-)

Anyway, I was browsing the Community forum at BuyItSellIt, and I read a post that was geared towards starting a helpful hint chain of small business services.

Vista Print was recommended by a few people so I checked it out. It was fun and easy to use, and took me all of 20 minutes.

*Update #2* Although I still think Vista is great for being affordable and easy to use, be warned that if you use them, you will receive a steady supply of promotional emails from them for the rest of your life :-)

I plan to use the cards to hand out now to all the people that ask me for more information about And Shine.




The other plan is to drop one in each package I send out to encourage return visits.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day. Over the years, I have held every possible view on this day.

Elementary School: We used to make crafty holders to receive cards and I'd write out cards for every kid in my class. I loved this for some reason. Don't know why. I'm not the least bit crafty.

High School: I decided that Valentine's Day was just a capitalistic ploy to make us all spend more money. Secretly, I was probably a little annoyed that I did not have a bf to exchange expensive gifts with.

Present Day: I still don't quite get it, but try to recognize these curious holidays in one way or another. Supposedly it fills life and relationships with meaning, or some crap like that.

What I know for sure is that we all like to give and receive tokens of appreciation, so why not? Do it on Valentine's Day or any other day of the year just to shake things up.

So Many Promo Tools, So Little Time

I'm relatively new to the world of ecommerce. I started selling men's and women's jewellery on ebay in October of 2008, and quickly became a Power Seller.

So, I'm thinking to myself, "This is great! I want more." That's when I found the next up and coming sale site, Bonanzle. Bonanzle doesn't yet have the traffic of ebay, but what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality. It's great fun.

So anyway, the big question is how do I attract more people to my Bonanzle site?

Bonanzle recommends the following options:

-google base
-twitter
-squidoo
-blogging

With the exception of google base, these are all new to me so I'm in the middle of a learning curve.

This is what I've learned so far:

-Google Base
Relatively easy to use, and well worth the time

-Twitter
Very easy to use, and may be worth the time in the long run.
Worthwhile so far, it that it's been fun to get started.

-Blogging
That's where I am today. It would be easy, if it weren't for the fact that I'm trying to get it published under a domain name that is being transferred from one server to another. Why must we make things so difficult??

-Squidoo
Haven't gotten there yet. It's probably easy, but the amount of new info in my head is making starting new things a little more intimidating.

How will I know whether all of these efforts have paid off? I suppose I'll know if 6 months down the road, I'm starting to get a lot of Bonanzle sales. I'm excited to see how this plays out!