EK's Business Blog

New Pictures!

2010-08-04T14:00:00.000-04:00

EelKat Wendy C. Allen New pictures of me, so, new profile pic! I am sitting on the stump of "The White Money tree", the site most of the poltergiest activity that has happened in our yard. There shouldbe water all around me, but the swamp has gone dry.

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EelKat Wendy C. Allen

Me modeling for my new line of gypsy wear. :)

Watch for my Gypsy fashions to show up at my Etsy shop this fall!

EelKat Wendy C Allen August 2010

16 new photos

Work From Home, Is It Possible? The Goldeneagle How to Start a Publishing Company Self-Publish vs Vanity Press vs Traditional Publisher
All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Updating my Etsy Store Today

2010-08-04T13:22:00.000-04:00

EelKat Wendy C. Allen Working on my Etsy shop today. It's getting a magor overhaul in preparation for the new iems that will be listed this fall. It was a "doll shop" but now it is going to be an online extention of my new brick and mortar off line shop. There's no brick and no mortar in my store. hhhmmm...wheels and metal? =P :)Hey, gotta rebuild my car anyways , why not turn it into a travleing store?

- EelKat Wendy C. Allen
  I read this article about a woman that wanted a store and couldn't afford the rent, so she turned her car into a store and went on the road, and every where she went, she just took her shop with her. I thought, boy what a great idea!
  
  I've ...spent more than half my life living in a car, I love living in a car, I love working retail, I want a shop, can't afford the $500 per week rent for a shop here in Old Orchard Beach, I'm in the middle of rebuilding both of my vandalised cars (the Dodge in 2 peices and the Volvo keyed to hell) so, why not combine everything all into one big giant project and turn one car into a house and the other into a store?
  
  Been musing over this idea for a couple of months now, wrote up this big business plan sort of thing to try to work it all out and see if it could be done, did lots of Googling trying to find out if any one else has ever done anything like this and OMG
  
  I found tons and tons of folks who live and work out of theircars and they are all full of advice on how they did it and what works and what doesn't and, so now the project itself is underway and, so since it's started.
  
  So, that's where I'm at today. Setting up the online extention of the shop now, and the offline out of the car exstention of the shop will hit the road next spring.
  
  Now to learn how to drive. Written driving test next week. The Volvo should be running befoe the end of the month. I have a very busy summer going on this year.

Yes, Avon Has Become an MLM, but I Don't Mind.

2010-07-30T09:10:00.000-04:00

My response to this post:

Is Avon Just Another Pyramid Scheme?

EelKat - Yes, Avon Has Become an MLM, but I Don't Mind.

Avon has changed a lot over the years. When my grandmother sold it (from 1920's to 1970s) each rep was assigned an entire town, or more depending on the saturation of reps in the area. In the 1920's my grandmother was the ONLY Avon rep in the State of Maine so her territory was the entire state! That got smaller over the years as more Avon reps cropped up.

Than later, it used to be you signed up and was given a map of 100 houses and you had to sell, sell, sell, like crazy at just those 100 people! That's the way Avon was in the 1970's - 1980s. That was because there were SO MANY reps that they had to start limiting how many costumers each rep was allowed to have!

They discontinued Representative Territories in 1987. Why? Because out right wars broke out. There were reps that had some of their houses on other reps territories (2 reps assigned the same houses) and that caused some nasty violence - marbles through car windshields, cow manure dumped on your front seat, there was one local rep, who took over 200 of my mom's brochures (stole them off door knobs!) and took them to the post office saying that my mom had left them in mail boxes! There was so much violence and fighting among reps that Avon had to get rid of the territories just to keep the ladies from killing each other. Think the Lobster Wars between the men of Maine are bad? They are nothing compared to the Avon Lady Wars that go on in Maine!

So, the poster that mentioned how pissy and rude some Avon Ladies get, was right on. Lots of them a nice. Most of them are great, but once in a while a really b**chy one shows up and than WATCH OUT!

I noticed that there are several that troll the Avon forums, and boy are they control freaks! When the online forums first opened, I posted pretty regular, but than the hissy-fit-divas showed up and took over the place and I just never went back. Besides, staying on the forums takes away from my time selling right?

At that same time (late 1980's) they started pushing Avon as a part time side job instead of a full time career, and started telling reps to get out there, get "regular day jobs" and than start selling Avon to their co-workers.

In around 1997 they set up the online feature and discontinued the door-to-door sales all together. Things went really bad than. Because Avon started threatening us reps if we REFUSED to give up selling door-to-door! They were telling EVERY rep that was not in the President's Club or higher to basically, get lost! It made a lot of Ladies really mad and tempers flared every time you meet a former Avon rep! Avon did the whole "we're online now - buy from us direct, no need for sales reps to come into your home any more!" thing and lots and lots of reps lost customers in droves.

The problem was quite simple: there are WAY TOO MANY reps out there! There are 3 living on my street alone and our town of 8,000 people has 21 of them (that I know of)!

Thankfully the whole "don't buy from your Avon Lady, buy online instead" pitch did not last long, only about 8 months or so. So the reps who stuck it out and still did door to door, ended up being called eRepresentatives after that, because Avon gave each of us our own "mini-website". Door-to-door sales were reinstated, but today it's highly unusual to find a representative that still does it that way, most do the at-work thing or the online thing now.

Hostess Parties were introduced shortly after that and reps were encouraged to get permission from the bosses of their day jobs to host "at work" Avon Parties. I'm one of the few that opted to continue door to door sales.

My grandmother started selling Avon in the 1920's and back than, yes, Reps had 100 house districts. In the 1970's my mom took over after my grandmother stopped selling. Yep, 100 house districts were still going. My mom had over 700 customers, none of them in her district and was one of the reps that started the protest to disband the territories.

But yeah, what you say is correct. Avon has started pushing yet another new scheme, and that one is: recruit, recruit, recruit! They tell us that 75 out of every 150 reps DO NOT have a single customer, and that they only join Avon to buy the products for themselves at a discount, and therefor it is in our best interest to recruit as many new reps as possible! I get 2 or 3 emails a week telling me similar messages. Why? Because in 14 years, I've yet to recruit a single rep! LOL! They keep telling me how I would make more money if I started recruiting. Every once in a while they ship "recruitment packages" with my orders (basically it's a pack of 100 flyers to hand out to my costumers to tell them how great it would be for them to sell Avon instead of buying it from me!)

My DM emails me every champaign to remind me I should join the Leadership program.

There was also a change about 3 or 4 years ago in the start up package. Which sucks really. It USED to include a tote bag full of stuff, 100 brochures, delivery bags, $300 worth of demo products, samples, etc, not any more! You still get the tote bag and 10 free brochures and a little notebook to keep track of customers in. That costs $20, but thats all you get today! It no longer includes the free demo products, ring sizer, lipstick demo cases, samples, delivery bags, etc, that came with it back when I joined 14 years ago! And really, I don't think that's fair on the new reps, because Avon Products are NOT CHEAP! Some face creams are over $100 each now! And the Reps only get a 15% discount, unless they can sell over $500 per order, in which case they make a 30% discount, and though Avon brags of a 50% discount, I only know of TWO reps in my district who sell enough (several thousand per month) to reach that level discount! And the discount changes with each order so if you sell $5,000 today but only $75 next week, you go right back to 10% and have to work your way up all over again.

And while they do not actually come out and tell you to stock up on inventory, they do quarterly send out a "case lot" flyer, where you can by 144 bottles of Skin So Soft or Anew or whatever the "hot thing to have on hand this quarter" is. And if you buy a certain amount of cases you start getting cases free. One of the last campaigns it was the Skin So soft Bug Guard "stock up for summer" "buy 4 cases and we well send you the fifth free!" Uhm. Yeah. I don't know ANY local reps who could ever sell 300 tubes of bug guard not even around here were there are campground every mile! At the back of the flyers there are always "success stories" which interview a rep who talks about how "stocking up before the summer sales" helped her send her kids to college or paid for her daughter's wedding or whatever.

So yeah, they don't actually push stocking up, but they do sneak a lot of little hints at you to make you feel guilty if you don't stock up.

Another new thing that was added in the last five years EVERY ORDER has a $7.50 processing fee now. That means Even if you DO NOT sell one single item this champaign, you STILL have to pay Avon $7.50 in order to remain a rep! That means you are paying not only $20 to join Avon, but you continue to pay $22 EACH and EVERY month in order to continue selling Avon, wither you sent in an order or not! That really hurt a lot of reps, because it was not uncommon for rep to only send in one order a month instead of the every other week Avon recommends (they DO NOT require you to sell every 2 weeks, they only RECOMMEND that you do, but if you go over 6 weeks without sending an order in, they cancel your account). A lot of reps locally here are only selling so they can use the products themselves and sell to family members, and when they had to start paying $7.50 a week to remain a rep, it caused a lot of reps to just quit Avon all together.

But yeah, you are right, it's really, really hard to sell Avon today, not like it used to be at all, and ten times harder to make money while selling Avon. I wish the company would be more upfront beforehand with people about what really goes into selling Avon. A lot of people join, than quit with in 6 months, and they often leave either depressed because they think they must have done something wrong because they couldn't make enough sales to earn an income or they leave angry with Avon for not being honest upfront about the extremely high overhead costs (cost of brochures is $2 per brochure unless you buy them in bulk cases! delivery bags and samples can take up most of your earnings fast, and demo products are only 15% off regular price!) It's sad because selling Avon was pretty easy only 20 or 30 years ago and today, it's a far cry from what it used to be. Today, you really got to love the product and have a lot of persistence to make a living at it.

I've been a rep for 14 years, I have over 100 customers, each of them only places one order once every 3 or 4 months! In the end, I am lucky if I have enough left over from purchasing supplies to earn more than $20 per campaign! Sure you can make a lot of money, heck Avon's #5 rep in the world lives down the street from me, she's making of 500k a year and Avon is all she does, but for her, it's all about recruiting and she has over a thousand recruits under her. Recruiting and the whole MLMing part of Avon is her style and it works for her. It's not my style though. I like the old fashioned door-to-door sales, sure, the pay sucks and thanks to having an award winning recruiter on my street it's hard to find any one in the neighborhood who DOES NOT sell Avon now, but I like the product and I like what I do, so for me, it's not about the money.

I DO NOT sell Avon as a way to earn a living, because really, I would need closer to 2,000 or 3,000 customers in order to do that. My grandmother made a full-time living on it, but she had close to 4,000 customers. My mom made a part time living at it, but she had 700 customers.

Me? Why do I sell Avon? I am allergic to most every skin care product on the market, Avon is the ONLY company I am not allergic to. So in the end, I'm a rep, more so that I can get products for myself at a discount, and the way Avon is set up, it allows me the option to do that. If I sell a few orders on the side, great! If not, it's no big deal. I have a different job that I do for an income. I wish I could make a full time income from Avon, but the sad truth of the matter is that less than 5% for their 5.4 million reps earn anything close to being enough to live on, Avon used to be a full time career, but today it's more of a hobby that keeps you smelling nice and looking good, while you work elsewhere.

But hey, you know what? Avon is constantly tell us it OUR BUSINESS and we can do AS MUCH or AS LITTLE as we want. And so, I just ignore all the hype. I don't waste my time recruiting. I don't waste my money stocking up. Sure, a lot of new reps come into Avon thinking they HAVE to do EVERYTHING and BUY everything, and they just burn out fast and get themselves in huge amounts of debt to Avon. I know what it's like. I did the same thing when I first started out! But than I realized: Hey! This is MY business! I can run it MY way. If I don't want to recruit: I don't have too! If I don't want to stock inventory: I don't have to!

New Keychains from Copper Cockeral

2010-01-09T05:32:00.000-05:00

Photography, Art, and Designs by Maine artist and photographer Wendy C Allen aka EelKat © 1978 - Present

The postage stamp choices below represent some of the different designs and themes created EelKat for Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts A Twighlight Manor Company.

Please Click Each Keyring Below To View It In A Larger Size

Celebrate our 6 year anniversary with us! (Selling art on Zazzle since 2004!)

This is the sister gallery to The Pidgie Fund, both of which are owned by The Twighlight Manor Press.

Other galleries I run include: The Rabbit Hole and Old Orchard Beach, Maine Photography.

My mom and 3 brothers each have their own Zazzle Galleries, so be sure to check out their work as well @
Tiddledeewinks
FlashAllen
The Juiceman
Johnny 5 Allen

You can find out How I Became An Artist.

For those of you who have asked what I use to create my art work, here is info about My Art Equipment, and for those just starting out, I recommend using these books because they are the Best Art Instruction Books and the ones I use myself.

You can find out more about me @ Who is This EelKat Person Anyways?. And you can find out more about Copper Cockeral @Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts

Thank you for visiting my sites.

~~EK

Like my designs? Want to sew cloths, tote bags, curtains, and pillows to match? Now you can using my line of custom fabrics created using the same designs sold here on Zazzle! http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/eelkat Fabrics available in clothing, quilting, designer, or upholstery weights. Prices starting at just $18 a yard. Do you see one of my drawings that you like and want made into fabric? Let me know. All of my paintings will eventually become available as fabric, but it's a long process, so if there's one you want to see come out sooner than others, just tell me. Thanks!

Work From Home, Is It Possible?
The Goldeneagle
How to Start a Publishing Company
Self-Publish vs Vanity Press vs Traditional Publisher

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Etsy RE: Quit Your Day Job.....What Is Your Day Job?

2010-01-07T06:14:00.000-05:00

I just found out Etsy has a forum. You can expect to see me less often on other places for the next few weeks while I go through reading the entire site. ;) There 5 minutes and I'm already posting answers! :)

Quit Your Day Job.....What Is Your Day Job?

indiepin says:
Hello!
well after a recent Storque reading binge, I read most of the QYDJ articles and it got me intrigued as to what most Etsians do for their "real" day job (if they've not already quit and gone full time on Etsy, that is).
I'll start, and I'd love to know what you folks do!
I graduated from University with a Psychology degree in the summer into the harsh economic climate of the recession and so at the moment Etsy is my main "job". However, I am also a professional magician, so I end up spending most evenings working events!

Who's next?
Posted at 1:18 pm, January 6 2010 EST -

When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them: I'm an artist and author.

My blog's bio-intro reads:

"You have reached the official blog of Wendy C. Allen aka EelKat. I am an author, artist, fashion designer, doll maker, rooster and feral cat rescuer, Squidoo addict, alien contactee, 5 time NaNoWriMo winner, CosPlayer, Steampunk life actor, huge Sesshomaru fan, vegetarian animal rights activist, and the original outspoken Proctor and Gamble Boycotter, who lives on a farm in Old Orchard Beach, Maine."

Yeah, basically what it says there, that's my "day job".

About 90% of my income comes from my art sales on Zazzle.

My second largest source of income is Squidoo but this is keeping in mind that I am listed as one of Squidoo's top 10 highest paid members as well, due to the fact that I am there #3 member for having made the most lenses at 507 articles written and more on the way - I am in the extreme minority on Squidoo, most folks barely make a few cents per month, so don't go quit your day job than join Squidoo thinking you'll make a full time income there like I do, because out of 800,000+ members there are less than 30 of us that make that much money there!

In addition to writing non-fiction and how to stuff online, offline I'm an author of short stories, chap books, novellas, horror, sci-fi, romance, The Twighlight Manor Series, and a couple of novels. I also write doll pattern booklets and non-fiction books about ufology, alien abduction, and crytozoology.

I also have been an Avon Sales Rep since 1997, but I basically sell it so that I can buy their products for my own use at huge discounts, so it's not really a big source of income.

Additionally I'm an on call temp/seasonal sales associate and fitting room attendant for Macy's, so I work there off and on for a total of about 8 weeks a year, usually during the Christmas season.

The rest of my income is spread out across CafePress, Associated Content, eBay, Amazon, LuLu, LinkShare Affiliate Programs, and of course Etsy is my newest addition to my income stream and hopefully in the long run will become my top source of income.

My goal is to have my Etsy store bringing in $5,000 per year by 2012, and expanding that goal to $20,000 per year in the long run once I've got it fully set up and established.

In short, my career is to do whatever pops into my head at the moment and find a way to make money at it for a strange assortment of multi-streaming incomes, so I don't end up having all my eggs in one basket.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

Work From Home, Is It Possible?
The Goldeneagle
How to Start a Publishing Company
Self-Publish vs Vanity Press vs Traditional Publisher

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

NaNoWriMo RE: Trying to earn money in alternative ways?

2010-01-07T00:40:00.000-05:00

RE: Trying to earn money in alternative ways?

[quote=DLDzioba]So, I work fast food for a living currently. I hate (with a capital hate) my job and I would love more than anything to get out of there. So this year I'm going to try and find another way to make a living. Phase one is I am making and am going to be attempting to sell jewelry both online and at the myriad of craft shows in my area. This scheme actually came courtesy of my mother and best friend who pointed out that since many people comment on the handmade pieces I wear I should try to sell something.

Step two will be to find a bookstore or library that is hiring as I'd love to work in a bookish environment. Sadly I've been working on step two for a few years now and one of my local bookstores just closed. But one can dream and I've got a much more solid idea of what I do not want to do thanks to my years of slinging chicken.

Step three is to quit my fast food job when the time comes. Can't wait for that.

Very scary. Very Big.
I hope I can do it.
----------
[/quote]

Your Big Scary is similar to part of mine. (Part meaning that my list had I think 15 different goals on it, this being one of the fifteen. =P) I don't know where I posted my list, I think it's on the second or third page of the sticky thread for lists. Anyways . . .

I started making dolls in 1980. I make a lot of dolls. Big dolls, small dolls, from tiny micro mini doll house dolls to big 32" dolls and everything in between. Here's the kicker: I make my own patterns, so every one of my dolls is 100% one of a kind. It's an expensive and very time consuming hobby. Skipping ahead to Big Scary.

For 2009, one of my goals was to open an Etsy account and start selling my smaller (thus easy to ship) dolls. I created a new doll pattern just for that goal. Life got in the way, seeing how the publication of my 2008 NaNoWriMo incited my LDS bishop to threaten to excommunicate me if I went ahead with the book publication. In the end I set up my Etsy store last spring, than spent the summer trying to deal with a lot of local hate and prejudices, and was not able to get around to sewing up the dolls until this fall, a few weeks before NaNoWriMo. I did complete my goal - I opened my store, I finished a few dolls, I started selling them. Goal complete.

Now moving on to 2010. As a result of church members arriving at my place of work and harassing my manager, I no longer have a job. Thus the need to add job searching to my list of 2010 Big Scary goals. But than I'm thinking, you know what? I really, really, really, like sewing cloth dolls and designing patterns for cloth dolls, and well, why not instead of focusing on searching for a job, I focus on turning my doll making hobby into a full time career?

So, the major goal of my 2010 Big Scary is this:

-- Take my Etsy store and turn it into a full time business
-- Focus on patterns over dolls (they sell better)
-- Get my patterns written down and printed up
-- Design a new set of dolls/patterns each moth until I have a wide selection to sell

My goal is to turn this into a business that pays no less than $20,000 per year (I've checked user stats, this is not an uncommon income for Etsy sellers - at least not for the ones who are really serious about Etsy and handmade crafts as a career.) Of course, that is a big, big goal, because the average Etsy seller makes less than $1,000 per year! Not very many Etsy sellers reach the $5,000 per year income line, and only a few hundred are earning $20,000+ per year. However, the fact that others ARE doing it, means that it can be done if you have the will and drive to stick with it and the willingness to do the marketing and research and product development needed to finally find the item that people will buy. And I'm pretty positive I can do that.

So, since I already had this idea, pretty well mapped out by December, I was ready to go once January got here, and as such, I am well on my way to getting this goal completed!

Since January 1st I have done this:

So far I have got one pattern nearly completed, and the cover of the pattern book completed, the layout for the pattern book nearly completed, and am ready to have the first run printed up as soon as it's finished. In other words, my first pattern should be in print and for sale by the first week of February providing everything goes as planned.

More dolls are made, several of them just got listed, with more to be listed soon, and more to be made after that.

I've started sketching out designs for a series of fairy and mermaid dolls, which I will start sewing, in a few weeks, and writing the pattern as I go along.

If I continue at the rate I'm going now, by the end of the year, I should have 7 or 8 or maybe more patterns finished, printed, and for sale. That translates in to a least 500 sales at about $10 each for a total of $5,000 minimum income by December. (I don't plan on reaching the $20,000 goal in the first year, but I think by 2013, I should be bringing in no less than that per year via my Etsy store.)

Of course, the $20,000 goal is not just figuring in sales of doll patterns, but also the dolls which sell for $30 to $2,000 a piece, as well as selling other items I sew, including dresses, CosPlay outfits, and Halloween costumes, however, I don't plan on adding those sections to my Etsy store until 2011 and 2012. Like I said, this is a long term goal which I plan on progressively expanding in small steps, until I eventually reach the point that this is my full time income.

Most of 2009 was spent in market research and writing up a projected 5 year business plan, while setting up the basics. Now that those things are out of the way, 2010 is going to be spent in product development and "laying the groundwork" while bringing in a supplemental income. 2011 and 2012 will be spent expanding out of a start up business into a full fledged business, and hopefully by 2013 my sewing/pattern making/Etsy career will be seeing big time profits.

So, there you have it. My long term Big Scary.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

Work From Home, Is It Possible?
The Goldeneagle
How to Start a Publishing Company
Self-Publish vs Vanity Press vs Traditional Publisher

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Copper Cockeral Info - 6th Anniversary

2009-12-21T05:58:00.000-05:00

Photography, Art, and Designs by Maine artist and photographer Wendy C Allen aka EelKat © 1978 - Present

The postage stamp choices below represent some of the different designs and themes created EelKat for Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts A Twighlight Manor Company.

Please Click Each Stamp Below To View It In A Larger Size

... . . .. ...........

....

............

Celebrate our 6 year anniversary with us! (Selling art on Zazzle since 2004!)

This is the sister gallery to The Pidgie Fund, both of which are owned by The Twighlight Manor Press.

Other galleries I run include: The Rabbit Hole and Old Orchard Beach, Maine Photography.

My mom and 3 brothers each have their own Zazzle Galleries, so be sure to check out their work as well @

Tiddledeewinks

FlashAllen

The Juiceman

Johnny 5 Allen

You can find out How I Became An Artist.

For those of you who have asked what I use to create my art work, here is info about My Art Equipment, and for those just starting out, I recommend using these books because they are the Best Art Instruction Books and the ones I use myself.

You can find out more about me @ Who is This EelKat Person Anyways?. And you can find out more about Copper Cockeral @Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts

Thank you for visiting my sites.

~~EK

Like my designs? Want to sew cloths, tote bags, curtains, and pillows to match? Now you can using my line of custom fabrics created using the same designs sold here on Zazzle! http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/eelkat Fabrics available in clothing, quilting, designer, or upholstery weights. Prices starting at just $18 a yard. Do you see one of my drawings that you like and want made into fabric? Let me know. All of my paintings will eventually become available as fabric, but it's a long process, so if there's one you want to see come out sooner than others, just tell me. Thanks!

Work From Home, Is It Possible?
The Goldeneagle
How to Start a Publishing Company
Self-Publish vs Vanity Press vs Traditional Publisher

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Inflation Rant

2008-07-31T23:05:00.002-04:00

I was just reading this http://www.squidoo.com/OffshoreOilDrilling and it got me to thinking...

The gas prices are gone crazy, but it isn't the gas prices themselves that are the big problem. The price of gas has caused everything else to skyrocket.

I mean something really has to be done. Last December I was paying $7.89 for 50lbs of corn for my chickens, and last week I paid $16.39 for 50lbs. Last summer milk was under $3 a gallon. This summer I stopped buying milk after it went over $5.50 a gallon. Last sumer oranges were 10 for a dollar, this summer they are $1.25 per orange! Pomergrants were .99c last year, they are $3.99 this year. Why? Because of the trucking shortage. Truckers can't afford gas to ship food to the stores, stores are raising prices because their shelves are not being restocked.

Did you know that in December it cost me $30 a month to buy catfood, and now just 6 months later it cost me $90 per month for the same amount of catfood! That's triple the about in less than 6 months!

It was on the news last night that the food prices have gone up so much that people can no longer afford to pay their daily bills. They said there are home for closers at a rate of 8,000 per day, as a result, and they expect that number to rise over the next 2 months.... that's more for closers per day than we saw in the 1920's, which says to me that if something isn't done, and done soon, we are going to be hit with a second great depression and it'll make the last one look like a pleasant daydream.

I do question however, the fact that Texas and Alaska are already drilling enough oil for the country and yet we are not using it, because we are sending it overseas. Seems to me like it'd save a lot of money and bring gas prices back down under $2 a gallon.

Another thing, Canada produces just as much oil as Iraq... why don't we buy it from Canada?

Another thing... did you know that 78% of the money we pay for gas prices if tax? It is not the actual oil price that is cause the gas prices to go up as much as it is the sky rocketing taxes that the gov is adding on top of the base price of oil. There should be a cap on how much taxes they can charge for gas. I am so sick of the government lately.

The gov needs to start using the oil from our own country instead of buying overseas, AND they need to cut the gas tax.

Work From Home, Is It Possible?
The Goldeneagle
How to Start a Publishing Company
Self-Publish vs Vanity Press vs Traditional Publisher

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Customer Service

2008-07-21T22:36:00.000-04:00

Does anybody care about it any more??

Business folks like you and me care, sadly most sellers on eBay are not business folks, but rather someone selling stuff they found in their attic, because it's easier to sell it on eBay rather than host a yard-sale.

I do not sell on eBay, buyer only, but off eBay I am in costumer service as well: 7 years as a door to door salesman, and than since than in doors as a sale associate. Retail sales repping is "my thing". I love doing it. I was a door-to-door sales rep for 7 years, loved it to pieces, quit due to family emergency, but I may take it up again, because I loved that job so much. Since than I got another job temping as a sale associate for a department store. Like my first job, my second one involved pitching sales and getting costumers to buy. All in all I've got 10 years experience pitching sales and I love doing it. My job is to find out what customers want and keep costumers happy, because that is the job I enjoy doing the most of all.

I pride myself in my ability to keep costumers happy... though my manager does not like the fact that that sometimes means I send them to another store! o.0 I love what I do, sadly, as you pointed out, costumer service is for the most part a thing of the past. The other girls I work with are all fresh out of high school or college and they are working retail "until something better comes along"... these girls come and go a dime a dozen and worst of all, they could not care less about the costumers.

They rarely smile, they do not engage the costumer in conversation, they never fold the cloths before putting them in the bag, they never wrap fancy prom gowns in tissue paper and pack them in boxes, they never leave the cash register to help a costumer try on a dress in the fitting room, and twice I've seen girls actually tell costumers to leave because they did not like the costumer!!! (a cross dresser, each time... which the store has a no discrimination policy and it says right in it that we can not discriminate against trans gendered folks... hey, we sell fancy dress items, the cross dressers are going to shop here! the sales girls need to get used to it or get a new job!)

In my experience it is the young people that are the trouble... they do not care about the costumer, they hate their job, they take out their hatred for their job on the costumer, they feel like they are in a rut, costumer service suffers because they refuse to respect their job and take it seriously. They act like spoiled brat punks instead of professional business men and women.

On eBay, the lacking in business professionalism is worse, because the seller can sell underwear in their underwear and it's that casual aspect of eBay selling that causes sellers to not think they are business professionals. Sad but true.

Work From Home, Is It Possible?
The Goldeneagle
How to Start a Publishing Company
Self-Publish vs Vanity Press vs Traditional Publisher

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

More Info On My Business Plans

2008-06-07T03:34:00.003-04:00

I was just posting a comment on some one else's blog and it got so long that I'm copying it to here:

I have been mulling a similar idea of my own... I even had a blog I started just for randomly posting my "start my business" ideas on, so I could see them on screen and sort out what I did and did not want to do. I think I made like 5 posts on that blog and than never went back! LOL! I need to go back and throw some more ideas around.

Well, I got my own "business" to the point where I had written up a basic business plan, not very detailed though, I need to rewrite it. And I have a portfolio of my designs that I want to do. Plus I have the business name all set up and a logo. But that's as far as I got.

What stopped me? Well, money for one. I had originally planned on opening a shop and selling direct to the public, but that was going to require a minimum of $200,000 because rent for a store is so high and they required a 3 year payment up front! So I temp. changed my idea from a store selling costumes and patterns to just selling patterns online, at least until I had enough money to do the store thing.

My next problem, was I had no idea how to get my patterns printed up so I could sell them! I checked with local print shops, but none of them did this sort of thing, and I couldn't find any online either. So I was sunk for a while and have not yet found a way to do this. :(

Well, lets see what I can answer of your questions:

My proposal:
- Patterns would be in english and french.

great!

- They could be printed as booklets, because the papers never want to go back in the envelopes anyway.

ugh! fighting with paper vs envelope is such a nightmare! I like the booklet idea

- The steps would have to be clearly explained and illustrated.

always good... I often find illustrations easier to understand than the instructions, so the more illustrations the better, I say

What I still don't know:
- Should they be basic designs to be modified by the user, or artsy personal designs?

maybe you could have a line for each? one line of simple "create your own style" patterns, and a second line with the designer originals created by you?

when I'm using a pattern I never stick with the pattern no matter how simple or hoe fancy it may be, cause I like to add my own personal touches to everything.

- Should I focus on styles that are not usually represented by major pattern brands (gothic, lolita, punk, etc.)?

YES! YES! YES! OMG! It is sooooo hard to find patterns for these styles. It's the lack of patterns for these style that resulted in me making my own patterns in the first place! With the "business" I was planning my goal was to design patterns for Gothic, Lolita, and CosPlay because those are the patterns I end up designing because no one sells them.

- Should I include a few costumes as well? Historical or fantasy (or else)?

It can't hurt. The more the merrier I say. For me, my focus would be largely costume and fantasy, because I planned the patterns I wanted to sell to be aimed mostly for CosPlayers and LARPers and SCAdians, all of whom are into the whom fantasy costume thing, so those were the target audience I was aiming for.

And most important: do I have any chance of selling any? I'm aware that I do not have any example of my apparel work on the net, but do you think the concept could work?

I think it would work (otherwise I wouldn't be planning to do the same thing! LOL!) I think there are enough folks out there who can't find goth type patterns who would love to buy them once you had them listed for sale.

Work From Home, Is It Possible?
The Goldeneagle
How to Start a Publishing Company
Self-Publish vs Vanity Press vs Traditional Publisher

All donations to Star Log go to The Rabbit Hole Fund. The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Should You Sell Your Zazzle and CafePress products on Squidoo?

2008-03-05T05:02:00.000-05:00

I'm an artist. I do watercolors, acrylics, pastles, crayons, colored pencil, felt-tip marker, and pen & ink drawings and paintings. Most of my art is of my pets both past and present: dogs, cats, roosters, birds, pony, fish, etc.

In addition to art I also do photography: my pets and my flower garden, and the beach mostly.

I've been doing this for over 25 years, so I have a huge collection of art and photos now, and it has always been my goal to sell my own art, but I also wanted to keep the originals. CafePress and Zazzle allow me to do that.

I've been on CafePress and Zazzle since 2004, and Prinfection about 8 months, and Squidoo 10 months. I have over 150 "free" shop on CafePress and one "premium" shop, plus 3 Zazzle galleries, for a grand total of more than 5,000 products for sale.

This ( http://www.squidoo.com/coppercockeral ) was my very first lens here on Squidoo. Since than I have created more than 200 other lenses and of those more than 30 of them totally devoted to my shops; here are examples of a couple of them:

http://www.squidoo.com/PediatricsTie
http://www.squidoo.com/Custom-Designed-Postage-Stamps
http://www.squidoo.com/Copper-Cockeral-Cards-and-Gifts-Our-Cats-and-Kittens-Line
http://www.squidoo.com/Copper-Cockeral-Cards-and-Gifts-Our-Rooster-Line

You can use them to get ideas for setting up some Squidoo Lenses about your own products.

In addition to lenses totally devoted to my shops, I also add modules selling my products, onto lenses that are of a related topic: say the topic is dogs, I add products featureing my dog paintings, for example).

Before Squidoo, I was earning between $20 - $70 per year from each CafePress and Zazzle. After I started creating Squidoo lenses featuring my products, my sales jumped, and now I'm earning $20 - $150 per month from each place. :) :) :)

So far I haven't sold a single item off Printfection though. :(

Squidoo has really boosted my CafePress and Zazzle sales, and I'd recomend anyone who has either a CafePress or Zazzle shop, to get on Squidoo and start making lenses about your products, because it really does work!

I have so much fun putting my art on CafePress and Zazzle and than putting those items on Squidoo, that when MonkeyBrain came out the first debate I started was this: http://www.squidoo.com/zazzlevscafepress

I love Zazzle and CafePress and Squidoo. I guess I don't have to tell you that they are my 3 fave sites and I spend more time on them than anyplace else on the Internet!

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

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Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
*I Love Phookas!*
Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts
Custom Designed Postage Stamps
Gifts for Peacock Lovers
Framed Art for Childrens Rooms
Best Gifts for Cat Lovers
Best Gifts for Dog Lovers
Best Sci-Fi Video Showcase
Zazzle vs CafePress

Work From Home, Is It Possible?
The Goldeneagle
How to Start a Publishing Company
Self-Publish vs Vanity Press vs Traditional Publisher

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Stamps

2008-01-04T02:29:00.000-05:00

I've taken to designing US postage stamps. Here's a few of them:

http://www.squidoo.com/Custom-Designed-Postage-Stamps

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All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Drag Queens & Transvestites vs Maine Law vs Fitting rooms

2007-12-18T00:42:00.000-05:00

This post comes from my other blog, but it's a work related issue, that I would have to consider, when I finialy get to the point where I have my own fashion store, so I am copying it here to this blog as well.

If you have been reading this blog or one of my other blogs for very long, than you may already be aware of my support of drag queens and trasvestites rights. If you are new to this blog than you should go to EK's Star Log and find posts tagged "drag queen" or "Etiole" to see my views on the subject.

Anyways, as some of you may know, the main character thoughout 90% of my books and short stories is a drag queen named Etiole. Many years of research has gone into this character, whom I've been useing since the late 1970's. Due to the extreme prejudice against these men in real life, getting my books and stories about my Etiole published, is next to impossible and usually requires me to self publish.

Well, as most of you know, for my day job I work as fitting room attendant. Now a transvetite usualy looks like a man in makeup, but a full blown drag queen looks just like any other woman you may pass on the street and unless they tell you they are a man, you would never know. I have run into this problem at work. We have fitting rooms for men, and we have fitting rooms for women.

This is my second year at as a fitting room attendant and while here, I have learned one thing: drag queens are a lot more common than most people are aware. Well, since th fitting room I am at, is for women, we send men to the men's fitting room across the store, however, how does one deal with this, when you work in the fitting rooms in a store that has fitting rooms for both men and women and you are confronted with helping a drag queen?

It never once occured to me to send them to the men's fitting room. When they walk in, you assume you are dealing with a woman, so why should you think to send them to the men's fitting room? It's a delicate sistuation that requires good judgment on the part of the fitting room attendant, so as the not embarase the drag queen, while not offending the other women in the fitting room either.

I keep my writing life and my job seperate, as I have learned in the past, that most people think I am weird for being a woman who supports the rights of drag queens. Apparntly most people assume that only gay men, supprt drag queens (drag queens by the way, are rarly gay, most are husbands and fathers).

So, at work, no one knows my feelings about transgender rights, because the subject has never come up, before. However, the other day, one of the other girls who works here, came up to me and started a rather odd conversation. She works at a fitting room on the other side of the store, and had, I guess, for the first time, encountered a drag queen. He (she?) needed help in the fitting room, and had asked this girl for help. At first the girl had been willing to help, but upon the realization that she was helping a drag queen, she immediatly gathered up his things, and demanded he leave the fitting room and head to the men's fitting room instead. She was so shocked that a drag queen had dared set foot in the store, that she came all the way across the store, to tell me about it and since I had never spoken to this girl before, I can only assume that she must have went around the entire store and told every fitting room attendant. (We work at a huge department store with multiple fitting rooms... 10 I think). She did not stay long enough for me to respond to her story, I assume she was in a hurry to tell the rest of the fitting room attendants on the other side of the store. Her shock and horror over finding a drag queen in her fitting room, did set me to thinking though...

I would not have done this (either sent him away or gone off telling everyone in the store about it.) I feel that what she did was wrong on both accounts. She should not have sent him away, nor should she have gone around the store blabbing this story to the other workers. I am guessing that she had never knowingly meet a drag queen before, so her shock and her reaction is understandable. But her reaction, was a reaction that was cold and unfeeling, and thought only of herself. She took no consideration to how he must have felt, put in this situation. Around here, drag queens are actualy quite common, but rarely do they make a big issue of it, so you don't know they are men. These are not the divas you see on stage and TV, these are people who look like your average everyday, ordinary women. They often have normal jobs. Think of how he feels. How hard it is for him to even ask for help in the first place. I mean, can you imagine how embarrasing it would be for them? They look like a woman, dress like a woman, act like a woman, talk like a woman, and 9 times out of 10, no one can tell that they are not a woman. Now they must walk into a men's fitting room, to try on a fitted dress? What are they supposed to do? Walk up to the man at the men's fitting room and say: "I need help trying on this dress? or and by the way, I'm a man." uhm... no, I don't think so.

Well, all of this had me thinking. When I applied for this job, I remember noting a very odd thing, that I had not seen on other job applications. I had to sign the standard "We do not discriminate contract" that all business' have now a days. One it was a list of all the thinks this particular business did not discriminate against. You had your standars: race, religion, marriage choices, etc. and than it added at the end: or gender identity. Gender identity, that means this business does not discriminate against hiring a drag queen. I though this was a very odd thing, as in my 2 years of sending in job applications, it was the first time I had seen this mentioned.

Than in oriantaion, we watched a video, which stated that all the store's empolyees MUST abide by the businesses, non-discrimination laws and that no form of discrimination will be tolerated by their employees on ANY LEVEL. They included gender identity on their list of things we must not discriminate against.

So now I'm questioning, what the girl did and wondering, if what she did was against the store's policy, because she was discriminateing against this man who has choosen to live life as a woman. If he has choosen to live as a woman, does that not give him the right to use the women's fitting room? I would think it does, but there are those who disagree with me.

Well, I've been running over this in my mind for the past couple of days and now finally I went to Google and started looking up what the law says about such issues. Do you know what I just found out? OMG! I had no idea just how big Transprejudice and Transphobia really was in our country. Such as, did you know, that in Florida it is okay for a business to discriminate against a drag queen; that he could be fired from his job, if his emploer found out that she was really a he? Not only that, but in Florida, he could go to jail because of his liveing as a woman, because in Florida, bing a drag queen is illegal! OMG! In fact, did you know there are ONLY SIX STATES where there is a law saying that it is illegal to discriminate against a transvetite/drag queen? They are California, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico and Washington state. Seeing how Maine is one of the states listed, I think I can now understand, why drag queens are so common around here. I live in Maine, and Maine is listed as one of ONLY six states that are "trasnvestite friendly". I did no realize how big of an issue this was in other states, nor did I realize that there were actualy states that would put a drag queen in jail just for being a drag queen.

What are employers’ legal obligations with regard to transgender individuals in the workplace? Unfortunatly only six states (California, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico and Washington state) have laws in place that answer that question in favor of the worker. The rest of the 50 states say it is okay to discrimiate against drag queens and a few even say it is illegal to be a drag queen.

What kinds of legal protections are available to transgender employees? Saddly, not many. In fact almost none.

And back to the original question at hand: What should I do when confronted with a drag queen who needs help in the fitting room? First off, if he has chosen to use the women's fitting room, than obveously he is either not confortable going to the men's fitting room or if he was, he already tried there and they sent him to the women's fitting room, and in either case I am not one to cause him farther embarassment. And secondly, it takes a lot of courage to get up the guts to ask the fitting room attendant for help in the first place... he has to consider the fact that, this attendant may very well be (and most likly is) hostile towards transgendered folks. When you are a drag queen, asking a fitting room attendant for help, may very well be the hardest thing you'll ever ask of anyone. It is my job to help the women who come to my fitting room and need help. If she looks like a woman when she walks into the fitting room and still looks like a woman when she walks out of it, than I do not think it matteres that she is really a man when behind closed doors.

If you were working in a fitting room and this situation came up, what would you do?

I also wonder, what policies should I put into my store's guidelines for dealing with situations like this? What about transgendered employees? I'll have to consider all the laws and such. How does one go about dealing with laws when starting a business? So many things to consider.

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

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Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
Want to Give Me a Reward for Reaching 50k?
*I Love Phookas!*

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Vanished Medical Records???? WTH?

2007-12-15T05:58:00.000-05:00

Here is a lesson I learned today, about record keeping and the importance of good manners. I will keep these things in mind for when I am running my own business.

I am so pissed off right now. All of my medical records have some how vanished off the doctors computer system and they are telling me that because I'm not on the computer, I was never a patient! For the past 20 odd years I (my pets) have gone to the Mann Memorial Clinic for Animals Route 1 at Arundel Kennebunk, ME. OVER TWENTY YEARS! Get that... 20 years, that is important to remember. This vet, however is more than an hours drive from my house. Last year a new vet opened up just a 15 min drive from our house, so I figure, I'll switch my vet. In a medical emergancy 1 hour and 20 mins, verses 15 mins, can make a big differance. It's to our advantage to go to a local vet.

Okay, here's the thing. You guys know how many animals I have right? In the past 30 years I have had over 500 pets. FIVE HUNDRED PETS. That's a lot of vet visits each year. I currently have just under 100 pets, including 9 cats and 1 dog. That dog, Buddy, has gone to the Mann vet twice a year every year for the past 10 years... that's 20 visits to the vet, for just that one dog... and my other pets have been going to Mann regular as well.

Here's the thing:

Today, I called the new vet to make Buddy an apointmet, the new vet asked me to have Mann fax them Buddy's records. Okay. So I call Mann and ask them to send Buddy's records, and get this: They tell me that they have no record of a Wendy Allen or a Buddy Allen ever being a patient there!!!! I was on the phone with the bitchiest desk girl I've ever talked to, for more than 2 hours, while she yelled at me, and accused me of lieing and said that I had never been to that vet before in my life!!!

She told me that they never delete their records, so she KNEW FOR A FACT that I had never been to their office! How the hell do you lose a 20 year old medical file... can you imagine how huge a file we must have... me going there for 20 odd years with so many pets? How can they lose something like that and not notice it?

OMG... me and my 500 pets, not going to their office anymore is going to take one hell of a bite out of their yearly income, that's for sure.... mabey they can't find me on their records, but they sure are going to notice a huge drop in the patients they have coming in now.

I couldn't believe it! I was going to them for more than 20 years! She tells me, that the computer system doesn't lie, that I'm not in it. I was in their system, a good 5 years before they even had computers in their office!

Has anyone else ever had anything like this happen to them?

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

-------------
Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
Want to Give Me a Reward for Reaching 50k?
*I Love Phookas!*

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

My Spelling is sooo much better since I started blogging!

2007-12-15T00:54:00.000-05:00

weird thing...it's really weird too, but my spelling is so much better (you remember how bad my spelling was... how doesn't?)... I started a blog, than another, and another... I have 32 blogs now, most of them I only post on once every couple of months, but one of them I post on every day, and for some reason, posting on it every day, and it being a blog not a forum, I started checking my spelling more and more, and now I actually make less mistakes... I can't believe it, cause just last year my spelling was so bad, I even had a hard time reading what I wrote. I think this has got to be one of my life's biggest achievements... personal wise at least.

My Spelling is sooo much better since I started blogging!

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

-------------
Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
Want to Give Me a Reward for Reaching 50k?
*I Love Phookas!*

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Be Careful Out There

2007-11-26T01:02:00.000-05:00

One of my friends on MySpace, just had a scary thing happen to him. I second his warning: BEWARE OF PEOPLE YOU MEET ONLINE, not everyone is a nice person.

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Rick R. Reed
Date: Nov 25, 2007 10:34 PM

Check out my new blog posting to read about a pretty scary experience I had this weekend because of a MySpace “friend.” You really do have to know better…and an author who writes a book about internet predator really should be more careful who he lets into his “space.” A true story.

OMG! what a creepy person! This hasn't happened to me on MySpace, but it did happen to me on eBay. I used to take on eBay forums a lot, than a flamer started harassing a lot of folks. Sending really freaky messages to about 20 or so folks (I was one of them). At first they were just lame one sentance smart mouthing things, I didn't respond to him, and figured if I ignored him, he'd go away, but after about a week, he took the messages off the public forum and onto the private email... that's when things got really scary. The emails went on for page after page, 2,000 or more words per email, and they said stuff like "I have pictures of your family" and "I know where you live" and "I'm going to show up at your front door when you least expect it". I reported him to eBay, as did the other folks he threatened. eBay banned him and we thought that was the end of it.

Than a few months later he was back on eBay forums, and sending the messages and emails once again.eBay banned him again, and this time banned his ISP. That's when eBay announced that they did a check and found out that this guy was useing 7 differant computers to send these messages from. They banned all 7 ISP addresses.

But that was not the end. This guy made one last realy freaky attack, that shock us rught to the bone. His next move was to hack into our eBay accounts, and than set out to bidding bids of $5,000 -$7,000 or more for all sort of weird items. I found out about this when PayPal contacted me and told me that an ISP adress from Nigeria, Africa had tried to withdraw funds from my bank account via PayPal, to pay for more than 20 eBay auctions for items variying in price from $2,000 - $7,000 each!!!! OMG! eBay launched an investigation and it was determined that this was once again, the same guy that had been harassing us before and they found him living in Californian.

Why did he do all this? I have no idea. As far as any of us victims, or eBay, or PayPal could determin, he had just picked our eBay usernames at random. None of us had ever talked to the guy prior to this event and none of us knew who he was or why he had set his attack on us.

Sionce that happened, I now cruise the internet allways looking over my shoulder.

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

-------------
Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Got Writer's BlocK? Kill It Today!
Need A Quiet Place To Write? Find Help Here!
Need Help Creating Characters? Check This Out!
Want to Do a Good Deed? Save the Goldeneagle.

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

What makes you smile and keeps you happy?

2007-10-31T01:05:00.000-04:00

Interesting thought, but I think that people work better when they are happy, but do you know what it is that makes you happy? What makes you smile and keeps you happy?

I know this may sound cliche`, but the things that make me smile are: baby chickens, little kittens, and roses (yes, actual roses).

I live on a farm and there is nothing so happy as a flock of baby chicks peeping and chirping as the scratch the ground and dig through the leaves. Nothing bothers them, they are just so happy all the time. It makes me happy every time I see them.

Plus I have 9 cats, and they always make me smile. They love to help me when I am doing my writing (I'm an author) and they sit on my papers and crumple up my papers and chase my pens across the floor, or sleep on my notebooks. They are always purring and bubbleing over with happiness.

And I have a rose garden, so I literaly do lots of smelling roses. LOL!

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

It's that time of year again. Have you signed up for NaNoWriMo 2007 yet? Sign up today and let the world's #1 writing contest begin!

Need To Publish Your NaNo Novel? Find Out How!
Got Writer's BlocK? Kill It Today!
Need A Quiet Place To Write? Find Help Here!
Need Help Creating Characters? Check This Out!
Want to Do a Good Deed? Save the Goldeneagle.

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

How much does writing quality matter?

2007-10-08T01:23:00.000-04:00

I was wondering, how much does writing quality matter to you?

I know on NaNo everyone says that quantity not quality is what they are going for, but is that really true?

In first grade, I remember on incident that stood out very baddly in my memor:

I was called up in front of the class, because I had gotten every single answer on my math test wrong. and the teacher wanted to "make an example of me". She copied out the problems and my wrong answers on the blackboard, and loadly told the other children to learn from my "laziness". (mind you this was in the 1970's when dyslexia was unheard of).

My dylexia was so bad, that I was removed from school at age 8, (they said I was too lazy to study for tests and unbale to learn math) and all of my learning from that point onward comes from sitting for 8 or 9 hours a day in the library reading EVERYTHING. Not just novels, but also all articles in all magzines and every volume of each encyclopidia.

Now lazy I was not... I am the farthest thing from lazy. At age 6 I already had over 1,000 books in my book collection, (today it stands at over 10,000 books + 7,000 comic books, for a total of 17,000+ books, more than out local libray which has only 12,000 books in it) and had read them all (I have also read all the book in our local libray... when I ran out of books there, I ended up with library cards at 5 other librayies includeing the state libray which has 2 million books, I should have gone though those in less than 10 years... I'll have to come back in 10 years to let you know) .. I had started reading and writing at age 3. I wrote my first book at age 3 as well.

I as, you may have guessed am a speed reader. I can read forwards, backwards, and upside down, all just as easy as reading normal front to back.

However, though my reading and writing skills resulting in my being tested by the Mensa's... my spelling and math resulting in my being sent to an after school remidiale course.

I kept that math test. Still have it around here some where. Toay, I know what I did wrong and why I had gotten every answer wrong. I did not get them wrong. In fact I got every one of them right. I wrote them down in reverse.

Example: One one problem the answer was 92, but I had writen down 29. Every answer was like this.

I was 27 years old before any one eber pointed out to me that I read clocks in reverse as well. Say the time was 1:15, I'd say 1:45. I never knew I was doing this for the first 20 odd years of my life!

As I said, I wrote my first book at age 3. That book was volume one of the Twighlight Manor series, which now has over 30 books and stories in the series and I am this year for NaNo writing the next volume. However, writing with dylexia is far from easy, in fact it is down right next to impossible, as my mauscripts require some very serois editing borfor they can be publishable and no one but myself can read the "misspelled" words. It is a task that reqired me to program, one at a time, every word I misspell, into my MSWorks spell checker, along with the correct spelling, a task that took several weeks to do.

Why did I have to reprogram the spell checker? Beacuse a spellcheck assumes that you at last got the first 2 letters correct, and if you are tytping in reverse, than it well not find the answer. While the average person uses 2000 words in their daily vocabulary, I use 5000, this means it required some 5000+ words be hand programed into the spell checker.

It is not uncommon to find not only misspelled words but miswritten sentances.

Example:

Something as simple as "I love you" could come out as: "uoy evol I". For someone o actually be able to read much of my writing from a first draft view, is next to impossible.

As a writer I strive for high quality... in both my books and my blog/forum posts; as a dislexic, I often have trouble with reverseing both words and the spellings of words. Often I do not see the misstakes until some one has pointed them out to me. It can be quite embaressing because I don't always see grammar and spelling mistakes in my work or in the work of others. I do my best to write clearly and avoid misspellings, grammar problems, and run-on-sentences, but often I simply can not see them.

I have often been sent emails by folks who were thourally pissed off at my spelling and grammar mistakes on forums and blogs. They acted as though I had just slaughted a million people or something. I find it quite distressing that there are such holyer than thou evil minded people who are so cruel and cold hearted that they actually send out such hatful messages to people like me.

Are there any other writer/bloggers/NaNoers who have similar problems when writing? How do other writers with dislexia work around their spelling and grammar errors?Have you had anyone respond negatively to your blog/forum posts/writings due to how you write?

-------------
Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

Need To Publish Your NaNo Novel? Find Out How!

Save the Goldeneagle

It's that time of year again. Have you signed up for NaNoWriMo 2007 yet? Sign up today and let the world's #1 writing contest begin!

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Copper Cockeral's New Web site Grand Opening!

2007-09-23T11:39:00.000-04:00

Copper Cockeral has just started a new website. Check it out and tell us what you think about it.

http://www.cafepress.com/copper_cockerel

I am currently transfering all of our 100+ designs to this new web site, many of them are listed there now, the rest well be there in the next few days, plus we are adding some brand new never before seen designs as well, so keep checking back.

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

PayPal feature added!

2007-09-15T04:15:00.000-04:00

A new feature has been added to Star Log: PayPal Donation Buttons! Why not give them a try!

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Squidoo PayDay!

2007-09-15T02:58:00.000-04:00

WOO~HOO!! Squidoo pay-day shout out! $10.28

In April I made 13 lenses, and than didn't build any more until August, when I added 62 more (about half are still draft/WinP, I'm not finished writing the content for all of them yet). Squidu forum says that the pay-outs are for two-months past, so the one I just got now was for July, not August. So I guess after reading the Squidu forum, it means that the $10.28 was for the 13 lenses I made in April only? Cause all of my other lenses were started after August 10th. If I'm reading their comments right that means my October payday should be about $70+-, right? Cool.

Well, if my unfinished lenses are already bringing in money, than they well do better once they are finished. I hope I have them all completed soon. Once they are finished they should actually start making more money right? (I hope).

I'm hopeing that in the long run I'll be making over $100 per month; I've heard that several people are doing that already. Are any of you guys reading this also on Squidoo? I've also heard that the Google slap will be affecting the high-payout folks this month. Did it? Did anyone make over $100 this month?

Well, here's the link to my Squidoo Profile, if any of you haven't checked it out yet, feel free to do so: http://www.squidoo.com/ekography

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EDIT/UPDATE:

I just went through each on my lenses "Royalty links" and this is how they rank:

Most of them, as I said, didn't bring in any money, because they are too new.

Here is a breakdown of which lenses made what in July:

The following made .04c each:

http://www.squidoo.com/writingadvicethatdidntwork

http://www.squidoo.com/RealMenBookCovers

http://www.squidoo.com/Kill-a-Character

http://www.squidoo.com/number1dime

http://www.squidoo.com/SeaMonster

http://www.squidoo.com/EnthusiasticAboutWriting

http://www.squidoo.com/FreeWriting

http://www.squidoo.com/Panspermia

http://www.squidoo.com/BlogCarnivalsForWriters

http://www.squidoo.com/nongenre

http://www.squidoo.com/liedetectortest

http://www.squidoo.com/BuriedTreasureSubmissions

http://www.squidoo.com/BuriedTreasurePlans

<p>Now... .04c each x 13 does not equal $10.28, so how my payout ended up $10.28 I have yet to figure out. According to Squidoo, these .04c per lens is because of Google's ads on the page. Google paid Squidoo .08c and Squidoo than paid me 50% of that.

Squidoo's Payout levels change every month, for the month of July the payout per lens was:

$4.12 (top 100 lenses)

$0.73 (top 1000 lenses)

$0.04 (top 10,000 lenses)

and if your lens isn't in the top 10,000 than you don't get anything for it that month at all!

However those figures do not include affiliate commisions. If you add MoneyMaker modules you make more money, providing that people buy the items you recomend.

I use eBay, Amazon, and CafePress on all of my lenses.

The payout for those is:

eBay 50% of what the seller earned.

Amazon 4% - 7% of the sale price.

CafePress for some reason isn't listed yet?

You also get $5 when you recommend others, after they join and after they earn thier first $15.

Squidoo says that the average payout for their lensebuilders is $35 per month. Most stay around the $10 range while a few hit $150 per month... and a handful are now making $400 - $500 per month.

As Squidoo gains more popularity these figures are expected to rise.

Well, there you have it.... how I make money on Squidoo. So, while my $10.28 is starting out small, it is something, and if all goes well, it'll soon be in the triple digits.

So, has anyone else tried this yet? If so, have you started making any money yet? I'd love to hear how others are making out with this.

Copper Cockeral on Zlio

2007-09-15T02:57:00.000-04:00

Here's a new way to make money online. I just found this place last night, signed up and am still building my shop with them. Not sure how good they are for making money online, but thought I'd try them out and see what happens.

Here's the link to my shop: http://copper-cockeral.zlio.net/ check it out.

To Blog or Not to Blog: Is Blogging for you?

2007-09-15T02:56:00.001-04:00

Introduceing my newest Squidoo lens, for bloggers and would-be bloggers alike... find out if blogging if for you or how to make your blogg better; also has many great links to gifts for bloggers in your life:

http://www.squidoo.com/To-Blog-or-Not-To-Blog/

Check it out and be sure to rate it... add it to your favorites, Digg it, StumbleUpon it, Kaboodel it, blogroll it, lenseroll it, bookmark it, and post links to it in your blog posts!

I'm Making Money Online, Are You?

2007-09-15T02:53:00.000-04:00

Thinking once again about making money online, sparked I suppose by my $59 check from CafePress just one week before my $10.28 PayPal payment from Squidoo. The combined total that I made was just over $70 for the month of August: my best total ever since I began my search to make money online!

Well, right now I am searching for blogs by others who are, like myself, regular folks looking for ways to make a living on the internet. I'm narrowing down ones I like the best and posting the list here. Not for you the readers, but rather for myself, so that I'll be able to find them again, however, if it helps you my readers as well, than more power to you!

Before going on, I'll point out to you all, that ProBlogger is by far the internet's top authority on making money online. He does not have a job and he makes over $200,000 per year through various online sites. ProBlogger is the blog he writes detailing how he got started, what he does, how much he makes, how he makes it, where he makes it, when he makes it, and how you can do the same thing he does. If you want to learn to make money on line, your best bet is to read the blog of the guy who makes more money online than anyone else.

As I explore and learn my hope is that those who follow my lead, will succeed as well. Hopefully you and I can make an income online together.

Well, since joining the internet in 1997, I have tried literaly hundreds of methods for making money online, and so far I have only actually recieved money from 4 companies, listed here in the order that I have made the most money from highest to lowest:

#1.) CafePress : I make anywhere from $2 - $60 a month here without any promotion of my shopd, and with promotion of my shops, I believe I can up that figure to about $150 - $300 per month. (A theory I am currently testing). I have been making money here since 2005.

#2.) Squidoo : I currently make anywhere from .75c - $10 a month. Each month I make a little bit more than the last month. I estimate that by Christmas I should be earning $30 - $70 per month. I have been makeing money here since 2007.

#3.) Zazzle : I currently make $20 - $60 per year here. Like CafePress, this was done without promoting my shops. I have just begun to promote my shops, so hopefully I will see a raise in my income from Zazzle. I have been making money here since 2005.

#4.) Amazon : I have made additional money by selling books through Amazon auctions, I make between $5 - $50 per book, and if I had more books I wanted to sell, I could probably live off this income alone. Problem is, I need quite a bit of overhead up front, to buy the books, so that I can resell them for a profit. I have been making money here, since 1997.

I tried eBay, but lost more on thier insanly high fees, than I was ab;le to make, so I chalked eBay up to a waste of my time. If I had items that I could sell for $500 or more per item, I might (might) be able to make an income here.

Below is a list of the money-making advice sites that I feel are the most useful. Additionally, these sites are being added to my blogroll. Check them out:

10 Reasons Why You Aren't Rich

Can I Make Big Money Online?

Consumerism Commentary

Dot My Spot

Frugal For Life

How Blogs Earn Money

It's Your Money

Make Money Online

Money $mart Life

Money and Investing

Money Blog Network

Nevill's Financial Blog

ProBlogger

Rupert's World Of Blog!

Small Business Guide to Website Promotion & Increased SEO

Squidoo

Tax Tips for Writers

The Budgeting Babe

Yahoo! Finance
ZingMaker

Making Money Online

2007-09-15T02:50:00.000-04:00

The following article was copied with permission:

Things to keep in mind when to make money
online

Ever heard the phrase : build and they will
come?

On the web, it's more like,build it, promote it consistently,
distinguish yourself in some way, and maybe they will come. There are millions
upon millions of websites. It's simply not possible to slap together a website,
dump it online, and wait for the money to come rolling in. Making money online
can be done, but all of the people who did, have worked hard to achieve what
they have.

If you be honest to yourself you know you will have to do
something to make money online. Are you also tired of all those programs that
promise you big money without any investment of time, money or work? It is no
breaking news if I tell you those programs don't work. let's be honest! If you
could make big money by doing nothing. Why aren't we all millionaires then? Why
are they still advertising and working their program? I think you can
guess.

They Tell you that you can be rich very quickly. This
should put you on high alert! If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
While we would all like to be able to make $ 500 a day, starting from our first
day and continuing into infinity, it isn't very likely.

You're told
that you don't need to do any work-they do it all for you. You cannot be
successful without putting in a lot of hard work

You're told that
anyone can make money. Again, not true. If that were true, we'd all be rich.
The internet is a goldmine of opportunity, no doubt about that.....but it's like
any other opportunity: some people will do well, other's won't. The internet
only gives you the home based work opportunity; you have to shape that
opportunity. Being told that anyone can get rich off their program is
misleading.

You'll have to be comfortable with your computer You
will do everything with your computer. You will have an Email program. Online
Business reports. With a good program an online training program. etc etc. You
don't have to be a wizzkid. You will get coaching and training to learn. But you
must feel comfortable with your computer and ready to learn some
tricks.

You must be willing to make a time commitment Without
doing any work you make $2500 the first month! Do you really believe this?
Again, we would all be millionaires. The internet is like the real world; you'll
have to work to make money online. Don't be fooled into thinking that home based
business opportunities are an easy way to make money online. It is true 99% of
the work is done by the company. As an affiliate you'll do 1% of the work. But
you're doing the hardest part of the work. Sure, your only job is to advertise-
but that requires a great deal of learning and effort. It's not as simple as
throwing a banner on your website. You have to put forth a effort in order to
make money online; if you're not motivated to make your home based business
opportunity work, you won't do well.

You'll have to spend a little
money to invest Did you ever hear of building a business without investing
any money? On the other hand we don't want to spend much, so better spend it
wisely.

Computer system - You don't need a top-of-the-line
machine. Get a good computer that will serve your current and your projected
short-term future needs well. Be sure to get anti virus software and a firewall
as well.

Reference books - I do think investing in a few good
reference manuals are well worth the time, effort, and money they save you. And
they do save you money in the long run-you can learn from other people's
experiences and avoid making same mistakes.

Email software - Most
computer systems come installed with Email software.

HTML editor -
You don't need an HTML editor; you can create your web pages using Notepad if
you like. Beginners often like WYSIWYG editors. WYSIWYG stand for : What you see
is what you get. All this means is that you'll be able to drag and drop items
using this editor so that you can immediately see what your web page looks like.
In other words, you don't need to know HTML.

Domain name
registration.

Website hosting

Internet access
fees

Mailing list
management

Advertising

SE/index reviews. You can
get a great deal of targeted traffic to your website from the major search
engines and indexes.

To get anywhere in life you"ll have to work
hard. Here are a few tips to help you work on your business:

Drop the
negativity - for example, instead of moaning about how you still haven't made
any money, focus instead on how great it will be to make your first sale.
Believe me, that first sale is an incredible feeling! It will energizes you in a
way that's hard to describe.

Take it one small step a time - There's no
point in setting a lofty goal, only to fail at achieving it. A bunch of small
steps will eventually lead to the achievement of a larger
goal.

Re-prioritize - There is no way that anyone can do everything. Let
small things go while you concentrate on your business.

Be willing to
make a few smart investments - While we would all prefer to spend nothing and
make millions, it's simply not realistic.it takes money to make
money.

Force yourself to do a little most days - sometimes it is hard.
You will have to drag yourself to the computer every single day to do 5 small
tasks-and not having seen a single sale. But in the end it will pay off; there
will be a point where you quit your job and make money online.

Stay 100%
focused on what you want - Keep your final destination firmly in mind: do you
want to be able to spend more time with the kids? Do you simply want to leave
the stress of the corporate world? Do you simply want the independence and sense
of achievement that comes from running your own business? Imagine what it will
be like once you achieve it. Focus on why you want the business in the first
place; it will help to keep you motivated.

Only you can change the course
of your live. So what are you waiting for? Get going!

"You have
permission to reprint what you just read. Use it in your ezine, at your website
or in your newsletter. The only requirement is including the following footer
with it."

*article by Ruud Boer visit Ruud's

Discount Shopping Mall
to profit the free Bonus and start your own Internet Business Today

or
visit the Dutch version Kopen met Korting.

Reprinting this article is
permitted with this footer included.

About the Author

Ruud Boer is a home business entrepreneur who gets
hundreds of visitors who subscribe to his free

Discount Shopping
Mall

He likes to help people to start their own home based business
and

make
money online .

Keywords:

Article
Source The Write Market

My Technorati Profile

2007-03-07T18:29:00.000-05:00

Now create a post using the code below and publish it to your blog! You may delete the post after Technorati's spiders have seen it. (You'll know they've seen it when you come to your Technorati account page and this blog shows as claimed, and not "in progress").Technorati Profile

The Concept Behind our Business

2007-01-29T11:46:00.000-05:00

What is the concept behind our business?

Last year (summer of 2005) my teenage brother searched high and low for a pair of blue suede over-the-knee boots, only to find that they could only be found on the Internet from a shop in Europe. This was not the first event like this, nor would it be the last. His latest endeavor involves a pair of sequined pants and an Edwardian velvet frock coat… again, only to be found online, from the Website of a small shop in Europe, and at prices he cannot afford. He drew up a picture of what he wanted. I am now making the pattern and sewing it for him instead. I made his velvet cape a few years back, after a similar event. This is an ongoing thing, and sadly, my brother is not alone in his never-ending search for cloths made in a style he likes.

From November of 2006 through January 2007, I worked as holiday help at Macy’s department store. Every day of my job, teens and young adults, who sheepishly asked where I had bought my clothes, approached me. They than went on to tell the tale of how they had searched far and wide and could find no one who sold the clothes they wanted to wear (often this meant cloths like Johnny Depp wore in one of his movies). They than expressed their delight at finding me, because they knew that if someone locally was wearing that stuff, than somewhere around here there must be a store that sold it. Their delight was quickly turned to disappointment as I explained to them, no, there are no stores around here, I know, because I have looked and could not find one and so I made my cloths myself.

There is a story behind my clothes, and how I came to make them. It started in the 1970’s with a mom who was obsessed with the TV show, “Little House on the Prairie”; so obsessed that she, a seamstress, recreated the clothes from the show, and she and I wore them; everything, from the deep hooded sunbonnets, to the layers of petticoat on top of petticoat. In the 1980’s my mom found her love for country music and abandoned the Prairie dresses for jeans and cowboy hats, but by that time, I was a teenager who had never worn modern store bought cloths in my life, and though I tried, I was never able to get used to wearing pants. Thus began my search for the old fashioned clothes of Victorian times. In 1987, however, my style took a dramatic change. With my new found fandom for Poison guitarist C*C*DeVille, my clothes went from ginghams and calicos to sequins and spandex. By the 1990’s David Bowie and Alice Cooper add been added to my list of people to dress like, and thus came the darker more Gothic side of my dress style. Of course ever since I was a toddler, there was always my love for Vincent Price movies, and wearing the sumptuous gowns from his dark and creepy Medieval, Renaissance, and Edwardian sets. In more recent years has been added a following for Johnny Depp and his Gothic movies. The end result is, that today, I wear everything from top hats and frock coats to empire gowns with flowing trains and deep hooded velvet capes. Some say I am Gothic, others call me Lolita, a few say Punk, and most call it Fantasy CosPlay. Me? I say, I am just me, I wear what I like, but wearing what I like, has not been an easy task.

I was lucky. My mom was a seamstress of very fancy “Cinderella dresses” for little girls, which she sold in her store, Rainbow Crafts. I made my first doll at the age of six. I designed and made my first dress when I was 12 years old. It was a taffeta ball gown with ruffles and hand sewn fabric cabbage roses. At age 14 I enrolled in a four-year college course in Fashion Design and Merchandising. I graduated two years early at the age of 16. From that point on, I have been drawing, creating, and sewing everything I wear.

Today, fifteen years later (I am now 31), I still create my own cloths, and I still get asked everywhere I go, by everyone I meet… “Where can I buy one like yours?” It is with great pride that I can day, I made it myself, and yet, it is with great disappointment that I must also say, I made it myself, because there are no stores that sold what I was looking for. Had there been a store that sold one like it, I would have bought it instead of made it myself, but I could not find one, and that is the concept behind my business plan: To create a place where people can buy cloths like mine.

In addition the clothes, though, is the other equally difficult to find Gothic item: make-up and cosmetics. Make-up became my other passion. This is an area I know as well as cloths, for as soon as I turned 18, I got myself a job as a door-to-door salesman. I became the local Independent Avon Sales Representative. As a teenage, I grew up with a mom who sold Avon, and so there was never a short supply of make-up around the house. From the 1920’s through the 1960’s my grandmother had also sold Avon. We had a long running history with Avon, and so it was a logical step for me to take. I remained with Avon for 7 years. In 2002 Avon switched from door-to-door sales to online Internet sales, and by 2003, most Avon Representatives found themselves without a job. I was one of them. Make-up however, continues to be a wild thing with me.

In 1983 the world saw the rise of the punk rock movement become so big, that it inspired a cartoon TV series that in turn inspired those truly outrageous fashion dolls known simply as Jem Dolls. Mattel’s biggest Barbie Doll competitor ever, Jem went over big with the Punk and Gothic teens of the era, myself included. In the 1980’s I looked like a Jem Doll myself… big hair, wild clothes, and that bright color neon, trademark make-up that the Jem Dolls were so famous for… make-up, which it was very difficult to find unless you had access to a theater supply store. In October you could get the clown whites and the bright primary colors, so just before Halloween, each year, I did my stockpile buying of make-up. Today it is much easier to find… most cosmetics companies now make a white powder and black lipstick and blue nail polish, but still, you have to know where to shop, to find stores that actually carry these products.

With Gothic, Lolita, Punk, and CosPlay cloths and make-up go hand in hand. You really can’t have one without the other. And thus I come to the end of the concept behind the store. My business, my store, well be on the lines of a Macy’s meets Hot Topics, on a much smaller scale; in other words, a mini-specialty department store that caters to people like me: Gothic, Lolitas, Punks, and Fantasy CosPlayers.

A Dream Pushed Aside

2007-01-29T11:42:00.000-05:00

My mom was a seamstress. She specialized in facy-dress children’s clothing, working out of her home for several years. In 1983, when I was eight years old, she opened a small shop named Rainbow Crafts. Rainbow Crafts was a very successful specialty shop which sold handcrafted items, including stuffed animals, dolls, and clothing. Within a year my mom expanded to include consignment sales as well. While my mom ran the register, I kept the shelves and racks straightened.

Rainbow Crafts remained a successful business, until three years later when tragedy struck, and my mom was hospitalized. Unfortunatly my mom had run her store by herself, totally on her own. There were no employees, no managers, no accountants, no investors, no staff of any kind. There was no one to take over the store when she became ill, so it was shut down, at first temporarily with plans to reopen was she regained her health. Years past, five, ten, twenty, and at no time was she not in and out of the hospitals, and so plans to reopen Rainbow Crafts faded away, while the store itself ran into disrepair. Over the years my career goals had always evolved around the plan to reopen my mom’s shop.

In the meantime, there was always the frustration at not being able to find stores that sold cloths to fit my tastes. It has always been difficult to find cloths to fit my style. Local store simple did not carry them. If I wanted to wear the cloths I liked, my options were to order them at outrageous prices from designers in Europe, or make them myself. I choose to make them myself. As a result, by the age of twelve, I was degining my own fashions, creating the patterns, and sewing and wearing the cloths I really wanted to wear. At the age of fourteen I enrolled in a two-year course in Fashion Design and Merchandising, and graduated at the age of sixteen. Today, nineteen years later, I still make all of my own cloths from my own designs.

As a teenage I had big dreams of reopening my mom’s shop, this time it would be not a craft store, but a design studio. Over the years, the building had fallen into disrepair, so I set out to rebuild and remodel it. Like my mom, I had set out to do it all on my own, without any help from anyone, and so with hammer and nails and brush and paint I set to work rebuilding the shop. I sanded, painted, and hammered every spare chance I could get. However, the shop always seemed more a dream than a reality, and so it often got pushed aside when life stepped in my path, and repars to the shop were thus drawn out over a period of nearly twenty years.

It was a dream that was not to be, a hurrican drestoied most of the building.

Our Image

2007-01-29T00:07:00.000-05:00

The Importance of Image:

People percieve a store in a certain light; that light is the store’s image. Image is the total sum of impressions the store leaves in the minds of the customers who enter it’s doors, look at it’s ads, or hear about it from friends. Everything the store does contributes something to it’s image: sales help, service, décor, layout, advertising, packaging, and of course the merchandise it sells. Every store reflects a point of view, be it luxury and extravagance, or thrift and comfort.

Image can be either good or bad, and can be affected most, by things not always thought of first. While store front, advertisements, and the sales floor may give the customer their first impression of the store, it is the restrooms and fitting rooms, that often leave the most lasting impression. A store with a dirty restroom, a messy fitting room, or cluttered shelves, gives a poor image. It tells the customer that the store is unkept and not well cared for. The customer next concludes that the products well be of an equaly poor quality, and the store well lose sales. A store that is not kept clean and neat, gives off a poor image, and well not last.

Each store has a uniquie image. Retailing like any other business, reflects the personality of the owners, managers, and sales associates. Each person, on all levels, contributes to the store’s image. Cheerful, helpful workers well have customers telling their friends of the stores friendly atmosphere and great customer service. While, an irritable worker well cause customers to tell their friends to streer clear of “that place”.

To determin our image goals, I shall answer the following questions. By answering these questions, I well be able to break down various points that help determ a store’s image.

Afterwards, I well reviw what I have determed to be The Rabbit Hole’s projected image.

#1. Should we depend on assortment? (Tops, bottoms, sweaters, etc. The department store approach of providing everything for a complete wardrobe.)

Yes and no. It depends upon your view of what an assortment is. Yes, we should have an assortment of various items, tops, bottoms, accessories, etc., however not in the general sence. We are not a department store and our items would not be the same as those you would find in the general department store (i.e. Wal-Mart, Macy’s, J.C.Penny’s, GAP, Fashion Bug, etc.). Nor are they items that would be found in the average specialty shop.

As a general rule, our clothes are not worn by the “average” person. Only a limited sub-culture, most often aged 15 - 35 wear our styles. These people fall into various groups and sug-groups. The most common of which are known as Gothics. Other groups that would buy our clothing include: Lolitas, Gothic Lolitas, Fruits, Punk, GlamRockers, Glitter Punk, Manga Girls, CosPlayers, and a few other such groups. Our items are more of a one-of-a-kind/few-of-a-kind botuiquie style rather than a department or specialty shop style. As such our assortment would be varied and constantly changing.

#2. Should we offer customers the newest fashions and latest styles or the basics and updated classics?

Yes and no to both. Basic black classics are always in style for the Gothic customer, as are shades od red and purple. The newest and latest fashions are not always the best for Goths, who often prefere to wear reproductions of 17th, 18th, and 19th century clothes. For GlitterPunks, futuristic fashions in neon sequined colors are worn, while Fruits are mad for hot colored plaid in “kiddie” styles. For Lolitas it’s Alice and Bo-Peep dresses, with yards of ruffles on their petticoats. The newest and latest fashions, sometimes suit the tastes of these customers and sometimes do not.

A large majority of our items, well be exclusive or uniquie to the store, and there may be only one or two of this particular item in the entire world. With this in mind it is the customer’s responsibility to buy it when they see it, because it may be sold by the time they come back tomorrow and we can’t just go out and “order” a second one for them. We belive in the theory “What you ee is what you get” and “Buy it now or not at all”.

#3. Should we offer clothes in the highest price ranges? Top designer names? How high a price tag are we willing to sell?

For our exclusive handmade creations, price is determined by the cost of materials and the amount of handwork that must go into the garment. For the mass produced wholesale goods, price is determined by how much we paid for it, and how hard it wasto locate the manufacturer.

With the extravagant Lolita, the sky is the limit. Sixty yards of lace is not an uncommon trim for the Lolita skirt. Lace that sells at $7 to $30 per yard at sixty yards or more and must be handsewn to the dress, can bring the price tag quickly into the thousands. However, the average Lolita expects to pay $200 to $500 for her dress. Yes, we should offer a few of the high price tag items, but not expect them to sell as our main items.

#4. Should we offer a mix of high priced items, mid-priced items, and low priced items? If so, how much of each? Which well dominate?

Yes…yes…yes. High priced items are great for those who can afford them, and should be available. Low priced items should also be readily available for those who want the look, but can’t afford the price. Mid-priced items should be dominate though, and these well sell the most and the easiest. Items that well appel to all income levels, these well be the store’s main source of income.

#5. Should we offer clothes at the “lowest prices“?

Yes. Of course. Especially in a store that sells high-end stuff. Having a few cheap priced items mixed in, makes the customer feel that they have found a bargin… a sort of needle in the haystack. It encourages them to tell their friends what a “great buy” they found. It also encourages them to return to the store to hunt for more bargins.This promotes browsing, and browsing is a good thing. The more they browse, the more they well buy.

#6. Which group are we trying to appeal too: Children? Teens? Young Adults? Students? Men? Women? Young Adults? Mature Adults? Boomers? Seniors? Low Income? Average Income? High Income?

I suppose that some of each from each group would find something to buy, but as a general rule we cater to the younger group: teens, young adults, and students from varying income levels, who live in alternative lifestyles.

#7. Are we trying to apeal to too many customer groups? Not enough?

No and no. The mix seems about right. We have limited ourselves to one general group: Gothic; but it is a large and diverse group that spans many ages, all income levels, and has several smaller sub-groups.

#8. Should we emphasize our own private label brands?

It is a possibility down the road, and deffinatly something I would consider, in fact, it is the long term goal. My brother and I are both fashion designers. The long term goal is to eventualy expand the store to include in-house seamstress/tailors to recreate the fashions we design. For the time being, we well carry clothing from various fashion designers and manufactures, that cater to the Gothic culture.

#9. Are we offering any exclusives? Is there anything in our store that is not available anywhere else?

Yes. One of the designers we plan to work with offers the option of one-of-a-kind creations, and we are seeking out other fashion designers who are willing to do the same. Aditionaly, I plan to have a workroom/studio to the back of the store, where an in house seamstress well bring to life the designs created by myself and my brother.

#10.What do we offer that is realy special and different from the other stores in the area?

I think most of the questions asked already, have resulted in answers that sufficiently answer this question, so I well focus the answer on who it is that we must compete with and why we are different from them.

There is only one store in the area that caters solely to the Gothic sub-culture and they are Hot Topics in the Maine Mall. Their line however, caters to the dark sub-cultures of the Gothic movement: Dark Goths, Death Goths, Techno Goths, and Techno Punks. Their focus is on the darker, gloomier, scarier, and at times bloodier side of the Gothic culture. Because of this, their line is often viewed as for a more “mature” or “adult” audience. They cater only to this very small and very limited dark sub-culture within the Gothic culture.

Our focus is on Gothic by it’s original sence of the term: the revival of the Victoran and Edwardian fashions. Gothic originaly was used to describe anyone who wore top-hats and frock coats, capes and Josephine gowns, Belle Epoch dresses, Erte` sheaths, Medival huparlres and surcoats, beaded and fringed flapper evening wear, and other retro styles from the era of the 1750’s through the 1930’s, worn as everyday fashions for today. The most common of this type of Gothic, is Lolita, which is typified by the wearing of knee leangth dressess over ruffled petticoats, with aprons and pinafores, over striped tights. The idea was to look like Alice in Wonderland.

There are no stores in the area that carry either the Gothic Revival or the Lolita styles, ours well be the first.

#11.Can we really call ourselves a full-service store? why or why not?

Yes, because in addition to clothing and accessories, we well also carry the hard to find Gothic make-up, as well as special care items such as blueing, which are required to keep your cloths looking their best. We plan to add a line of Gothic music and DVDs as well.

#12. How many check-outs do we provide for our customers? Is this enough? Do customers have to wait in long lines? Do we need more check-outs? Are some of our check-outs not being used? Do we have more than we really need?

This is as yet undecided. Most likely there well be one in use, with a second one to act as a “spare” for use on busy days.

#13. Should we offer special services? (Gift wrapping, alterations, free make-overs, etc.)

Not yet decided.

Gift wrapping, is a possibility, which most likely we well do. The look would carry our store’s overall image of course: black gift boxes with red tissue paper, tied with a red organda bow, or something to that effect.

Alterations, is possible, but unlikely. If we do offer this service, I wouldn’t do them myself. If there was a demand for this, I would consider hiring someone.

Free make-overs and product demonstrations are a real possiblilty. Not something I would do myself, but as I plan to carry the Ben Nye line in our store, I may consider hiring a cosmetic consultant to give our customers demonstrations.

#14. Do we have a recognizable logo? Do we use it in our advertising? Is it on our sign, shopping bags, etc.?

Working on it as we speak. Planning on the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland as our main logo, with the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat as sub-logos.

Yes, well use it on our advertising.

Plan to have a wooden sign made by a local sign maker who carves and paints business signs. Planning on the White Rabbit and the store name “The Rabbit Hole”.

Planning to have stickers made up with the store name and logo on them, and than use them on generic/blank boxes and shopping bags, allowing us to buy packing in bulk, but still have our name and logo one them. Gift boxes and paper (not plastic) shopping bags well be black. Tissue paper well be red. Red organda ribbons and bows well be used to decorate boxes and bags.

Planning to have business cards printed up with name and logo, which well do double duty as both business cards and hangtags. Ilike the idea of attaching them to garment by use of metal ball-chains or red satin ribbons.

#15. Can we live up to our fashion claims? Are our ads better than the actual merchandise? Are customers disappointed when they see the real thing?

Ads which have pictures of the items are VERY expensive and often not worth the expense. I do not plan on doing a lot of advertising in newspapers or magazines, if I do any at all. Word of mouth, and direct mailing of postcards printed with name and logo will work better for us. As customers won’t see the clothes in the ad, they can not be disappointed when they see the real thing, now can they? I plan to keep advertising plan and simple… the minimalist style, let the cloths in the storefront windows do the talking.

#16. Are we changing with the times? Well our merchandise remain basicly the same over the years or well it change with the current trends?

A tricky question. Yes and no. Yes, we well be changing with the times, of course. The Gothic culture has been around for more than 30 years now and it is always changing and evolving, and our store well of course reflect those continued changes as time goes on. We well also remain basicly the same over the years, in that we well focus on he Gothic culture and it’s sub-cultures, and strive to carry garments that are exclusive or near exclusive to our store.

#17. Is our merchandise turnover in tune with our customers’ buying habits? Do we change stock too often or not often enough?

This question does not yet apply, as we have not yet opened our store to the public. Hypthetical, I’d say yes, though, because by having exclusive, near exclusive, and specialty hard to find items, we would replace our stock as needed. For example, when a one of a kind creation is sold, we would replace it with a new one of a kind creation. We also place to change the display in the store window on a weekly basis, and rotating the store’s stock at the same time, thus moving everything to a new place with in the store, giving the illusion that new items have come in, wither or not they have. This promotes customers to buy more items, because an item that they didn’t see last week, is now in the front where they can see it. They would have bought it had they seen it last week, but they hadn’t gone to the back of the store so they missed seeing it. Now that it’s in the front window, they come in and buy it. This method of stre rotation allows all of our items to be put on display and gives each a chance in the spotlight. It also helps us to better determin what our customers want so that in the futie we can have other similar items in stock.

This method well require that we have several manikins; four or five in the store windoe and four or five more scattered throughout the store.

#18. Are we in/choosing a location that reflects our store’s image? How do people feel about the general location? How do they view other shops/stores on the same street?

We have not yet choosen a definite location, but have looked at several areas so far. Old Orchard Beach, Saco, Biddeford, Scarbourgh, Wells, Kennebunk, KennebunkPort, South Portland, and Portland, Maine are the ares in which we have searched. My conclusions:

Old Orchard Beach:
My home town, founded by my family 300 years ago, the image it brings up for most people is: it is Maine‘s biggest tourist attraction, drawing crowds of 2million people each summer, honky-tonks, bar rooms, cheap sovinears, family vacation, amusment park, 7 miles of white fine sand beach, T-shirt shops, heavy foot traffic, a ghost town 9 months of the year, Quebec’s playground, the home of super-rich millionaires, seniors and retiries, second highest taxes in the state of Maine, leases prices that the average shop owner can not afford.

Saco:
The image it brings up for most people is: Old Orchard’s closet neighbor and almost as expensive to live in, Historic District, beautiful old Victorian mansions, lots of history, home of York Hill and the Saco River Curse, laced with huge farms and rolling hills on it’s outskirts, farmers markets, downtown shopping in old time shops, average to mid-high income families with children.

Biddeford:
The image it brings up for most people is: Pigeons, abandoned mills, old brick factories, colleges, home of the nation’s highest rated medical college and a five-star hospital, medical communities, pigeons, tall brick buildings, low-income, slum-distric, homeless people, shelters, pigeons, lots of history, very low priced leases, lots of section eight apartment houses.

Scarbourgh:
The image it brings up for most people is: Old Orchard Beach’s other neighbor and bitter rival, lobster wars, clam flats, Pine Point, fishing shacks, the Clam Bake, the rought to the Maine Mall, nature preserve, salt marsh, wild life, expensive homes for high income families who can’t afford to live in Old Orchard, growing as a medical community, growing as a business district, no small shops, no downtown district.

Wells:
The image it brings up for most people is: Lowest taxes in the state of Maine, the antiquies capital of the world, most antique shops in one place than any where else in the world, the neighbor of Kennebunk and Kennebunk Port, lots of woods and fields being clear cut for rabid population growth due to people wishing to live near Kennebunk but not being able to afford to

Kennebunk:
The image it brings up for most people is: In the top five for highest taxes in the state of Maine, the home of the super-rich super-wealthy super-millionaires, a historic distric, lots of old Victorian mansions, high society, very expensive, vacation home for actors and celbraties

Kennebunk Port:
The image it brings up for most people is: Part of Kennebunk, the home of Presidant George Bush, beautiful rocky coastline, beaches galore, in the top five for highest taxes in the state of Maine, high consentration of tiny art galleries and specialty shops that cater to millionaires, an older more mature and sophisticated population, the home of the super-rich super-wealthy super-millionaires, a historic district, lots of old Victorian mansions, high society, very expensive, vacation home for actors and celbraties

South Portland:
The image it brings up for most people is: Home of the Maine Mall. Nobody really cares about anything else or knows anything else about South Portland. For most people South Portland = Maine Mall, acreas and acres of departments stores piled one on top of the other including: Sears, J.C.Penny, Macy*s, Gap, Talbots, TJMax, Target, Walmart, Hot Topics, Spencers, Best Buy, Disney Store, 3 Game Stops, and over 200 other stores that come and go. South Portland is the shopper’s ultimate paradise, and has more stores than anyplace else in Maine. Very competitive, highly sought after by retailers, amoung the highest lease prices in the state of Maine. Many small shops open up each year, most are quickly slaughtered by the highly competitive super giant department stores in the area.Great proving ground, if you can survive in the Mall area, you can survive almost anywhere, but it’s very risky to even make an attempt.

Portland:
The image it brings up for most people is: The arts, art museum, art school, theaters, dance studios, art galleries, small shops, fancy boutiques, designer clothes for alternative lifestyles (including Wiccans, environmentalists, Goths, etc.), a college on evey street corner, college students, heavy foot traffic, busy streets, in-town buses, taxies, one way streets, lots of tall buildings, dozens of tiny shops squeezed into every possible nook and cranny on every street, Maine‘s biggest city.

Overall, I feel that Portland is our best bet, and have focused my search on the Monument Square, Cogress St, Old Port area.

Our Image: How well customers see our store?

If you were to ask our customers for a list of words associated with The Rabbit Hole, that list might include the following:

fun
friendly
playful
creepy
helpful
happy
cheerful
clean
neat
high quality
Alice in Wonderland
Gothic
Victorian
Edwardian
black & red
uniquie
one of a kind
romantic
not found anywhere else

That is out intended image, the image for which we strive. How well we achieve this?

Our physical image:

Gothic. Fun. Alice in Wonderland.

A décor of black and red, built uon the Gothic Alice in Wonderland theme, with black and red “chess board tiled” floors. Store front painted black, with red drapes in the window that set off the store’s latest display.

The White Rabbit as our prime logo, with the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat appearing as minor logo images. The three characters appearing on signage, business cards, hang tags, shopping bags, and letterheads. Over all the layout and décor tells our customers “this is a fun place to shop”.

Our merchandise image:

Clothing, make-up, and accessories with a Gothic, Lolita, CosPlay, Alice, and Retro theme, including one-of-a-kind handmade creations from various Gothic fashion designers. Lots of black, lots of velvet, lots of bright sparkly things. Sometimes creepy, but a sweet, cute, innocent, happy type of creepy that is never gory, bloody, or offensive. We strive to bring a family friendly atmosphere, selling products that apeal to children, as well as teens and adults. Parents well feel safe letting their children shop at The Rabbit Hole, because they know they well never find “adult items” (i.e. porn, fetishism, etc) or graphic items (i.e. blood, gore, violence, etc.) in our store.

Our atmosphere image:

One word: FUN!

Our image well be dark and creepy, but safe and family friendly and promting the fact that dressing up is fun, fun, fun! Wearing capes is fun! Dressing up like your fave comic book hero is fun! Wearing top hats and striped tights and throwing tea parties is fun! Dressing up like pirates and wizards is fun! Going to Renesains Faires, Live Theater Festivals, and Civil War Reenactmints is fun! Wearing ball gowns and tiaras is fun! Putting on a play at the next family reuniun is fun! Dressing up for Halloween is too much fun to do it just once a year, at The Rabbit Hole, we dress this way year ‘round.

Our professional image:

Customer service representatives who are cheerful and friendly and strive to assist the customer. The owner and managers well not be locked away in ivory towers, but working the sales floor and there to answer customer questions and assiste sales associates when needed. An open door policy that means the executives are down to earth humans, there when you need them, not hidden away behind office doors. The owner (myself) well be the buyer and chief sales associate, because picking out items to sell and interacting with the customers is the thing I love doing most and the whole reason I wanted a store of my own.

Our “hidden” image or behind the scenes:

Fitting rooms, restrooms, stock room, and sales floor to be kept clean and neat at all times. We strive to win awards in this area, because, me, myself, personaly, I obsess in this area. When ever I enter a store, the first place I go is to the ladies room. I always check to see, are they clean? Are they neat? Are they decorated? Does the air smell clean? A store that keeps it’s bathroom sparklingly clean, often keeps its merchandise and sales floor clean as well.

Angel Investors Wanted!

2007-01-25T15:52:00.000-05:00

EelKat is currently seeking angel investors to help fund the start up of a retail store in Portland Maine, in fact that is the whole purpose for the building of this site. Over the next few weeks, I well be adding details on the business plans, long term goals, short term goals, job oppertunity overviews, my personal history, and other such items required for creating a successful business strategy. Information on this project can be found throughout this site, with new information added each week. Keep checking back for full details.

Personal Resume`

2007-01-25T15:35:00.000-05:00

CURRENT OBJECTIVE:
Retail sales representative in the fashion industry.

LONG TERM GOAL:
Management ~ buyer.

ULTIMATE GOAL:
Owner of my own retail clothing store.

QUALIFICATIONS:
I studied Fashion Design and Merchandising for 2 years.
My mother was a seamstress, and I began sewing my own cloths at age 12.
By age 16, I was drawing my own fashions, creating the patterns, and sewing them.
I was a make-up consultant with Avon for 7 years.

EDUCATION HISTORY:

YEAR: SCHOOL: FOCUS:

1980 - 1992 ~ Home School ~ Art & Creative Writing

1989 - 1991 ~ ICS Career School ~ Fashion Design & Merchandising

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

Self-employed writer of fiction.
1978-2007 ~Science Fiction & Romance Author (currently)
My job is to write horror, sci-fi, gothic, fantasy, & romance stories.

Macy’s Department Store
2006-2007 ~Moderate Sportswear Sales Associate & Customer Service Representative (currently)

My job at Macy*s is multi-tasked and includes, running a register, customer service, helping customers in the fitting rooms, recovery of clothes from fitting room to sales floor, and the opening and closing of cash registers (cash count).

Avon Products Inc.
1996-2003 ~Independent Sales Representative

As a door-to-door salesman and cosmetics consultant, it was my job to place purchase orders, give in home demonstrations of products, convince people that they wanted to buy my products (make-up, cosmetics, beauty products, bath oils, fragrances, jewelry, and gifts items), order the products they wanted, deliver the products to their home, than mail the money to Avon’s headquarters in Delaware

Rainbow Crafts
1983-1986 ~Helper

Rainbow Crafts was a small consignment shop that specialized in hand sewn dolls, stuffed animals and children’s clothing. My job was to straighten items on shelves and keep the store neat.

Test Post #1

2007-01-25T15:23:00.000-05:00

This is test post # 1 to see how this blog well look. Just ignore this post, the real ones are soon to follow. Thank you.

~~EK