40% off Posters at Zazzle

Save 40% off the poster net price - discount will be deducted when one or more poster items is purchased and the coupon code BTSRULEPRINT is applied at checkout. The net sale price is the price of the product (excluding shipping and taxes). Offer is valid from August 16, 2010 through August 22, 2010 at 11:59pm PT. If a volume discount applies to your order, you will receive either the discount set forth in this offer or the standard volume discount, whichever is greater. Offer valid on Zazzle.com only.

Are you sick of cold callers?? Argh!!

I get so many cold-callers at my door that it drives me nuts. The worst is one particular company that I actually had do some work for me last October. They messed the job up terribly and despite having been paid in full, took until June of this year to fix it; even then I had to get 'The Judge' from a national newspaper to intervene twice on my behalf! Well despite all of my letters and phonecalls to the company, everything I have posted online about them (of which I have made them well aware), every few weeks I was still getting one of their canvassers at my door asking if I would like a quote to have more work done!!!

With that in mind, I designed these stickers to pop on your door or letterbox/mailbox. Unsurprisingly, quite a few have sold!!

NO cold calling Door Sticker on zazzle.com
NO cold calling Door Sticker on zazzle.co.uk
NO cold calling Door Sticker on zazzle.ca
NO cold calling Door Sticker on zazzle.com.au

Funny Cold-Callers Door Sticker on Zazzle.com
Funny Cold-Callers Door Sticker on Zazzle.co.uk
Funny Cold-Callers Door Sticker on Zazzle.ca
Funny Cold-Callers Door Sticker on Zazzle.com.au

NO unsolicited mail letterbox sticker on zazzle.com
NO unsolicited mail letterbox sticker on zazzle.co.uk
NO unsolicited mail letterbox sticker on zazzle.ca
NO unsolicited mail letterbox sticker on zazzle.com.au

Zazzle Sale, $8 off Custom Binders

Zazzle's Latest Sale


Use Code: BTSRULEAVERY

Ends Sunday


$8.00 of the binder net sale price will be deducted when one or more binder items is purchased and the coupon code BTSRULEAVERY is applied at checkout. The net sale price is the price of the product (excluding shipping and taxes). Offer is valid from August 9, 2010 through August 15, 2010 at 11:59pm PT. This offer does not apply to past purchases and may not be combined with any other Zazzle promotional or volume discount offers. If a volume discount applies to your order, you will receive either the discount set forth in this offer or the standard volume discount, whichever is greater. Offer valid on Zazzle.com only.

A rather unfortunate coincidence.

Further to yesterday's post regarding domain names, I've been having a discussion on the zazzle forum with some fellow zazzlers ragarding domain names, the pros and cons of .com vs .net or .biz, of hyphenating the name or adding to it, and cautions in actually choosing the name. Someone cautioned me to take care that the word or letter combinations that I chose couldn't be misconstrued and lead to x-rated websites appearing in search results beside my own. I did a search on google with the 'safe search' turned off and there at the bottom of page 2 of the results was an 'adult' site. I clicked on it to be sure and was thankfull that the page had a warning and a requirement to 'proceed' or 'cancel' before anything was shown, but it really wasn't a nice thing to find.

I'm quite naive I guess. To me, to my mind, Animatastic is nothing more than a play on "Fantastic Animals" and that seemed perfect for a store filled with cute, family friendly cartoon animal designs. BUT, on the same day, yet another zazzler pointed out to me that when they went to a Squidoo lens I have (a semi-promotional article for the store) one of the google adsense ads at the very bottom of the page was for another x-rated website! I'm really disgusted that google allow x-rated websites on adsense AND that squidoo can't filter the ads that google place on their website to be U or G rated.

Before I set up the store and chose the name, I did do a google search on it and all of the results I saw were actually related to animation and anime not animals. Google actually suggested that I meant to type animEtastic not animAtastc, and I didn't see any x-rated links on the first few pages with either spelling. Doing the search now, I pretty much take up the first three pages of results on google, but haven't tried any other search engines yet.

I'm stuck with the zazzle username and url, but with a lot of effort I *could* rename and rebrand the store, website, blogs, facebook fanpage and everything else I've done promotion-wise. I can buy a domain for the new chosen store name and have that direct to my zazzle store and/or website. It would all be a HUGE effort and I'm sure I'd lose some promotions and sales in the meantime, but I don't want to lose any customers or offend anyone because some sick porno site appeared close to me in the search results.

Why don't search providers make the DEFAULT search parameters a universal rating rather than make us go into advanced search settings to change to 'safe search'?

What do YOU think of when you hear the name Animatastic? Do you think it's appropriate for a family friendly store? The riskiest designs I have are in the BIG Kids range:

Trousers Snake T-shirt by Animatastic
Shop for a t-shirt on zazzle

AND

Sexy Chick - Cool & Fun Ladies T-shirt by Animatastic

Browse other Sexy T-Shirts

Those are the only two designs I have that made me create the BIG Kids category, everything else would happily fit in a general category by animal type. I don't think there is anything wrong with either design but I thought some parents may not appreciate having to explain "Trouser Snake" and the other designs in the category just aren't things that would appeal to kids - 'chick virtues' positive affirmation products aimed at women for example. The category thumbnail is this design below as I deliberately didn't want 'trouser snake' or 'sexy chick' appearing on the frontpage of the store.

Biker Chick - Customizable Ladies T-shirt by Animatastic
Shop the t-shirts section of zazzle

Random is as Random Does

I sat up until 3am this morning working, latest I've done in a while, but I started on something and wanted to get it finished before going to bed, so 3am it was, lol.

Unfortunately, the local council's refuse collection department had their Garden Waste Collection scheduled today so I was awoken at 8.30am by the garbage truck, wheely bins being dragged around and the resulting 'dog chorus' from the 6 or so neighbourhood dogs barking like crazy. As soon as it happened I thought of 'dog chorus' which led to 'frog chorus' and from that point I had the Paul McCartney song from my childhood stuck in my head - argh! So it was time to get up and distract myself, lol.

Too Cool Daisy Frog by LaureFCarlisle	Lilly Pad Frogs Mousepad by fuzzbuttcafe	Frog Prince - Kiss Me Tee by mrssocolov
Certified Dog Lover Dark by MenagerieMayhem	Stubborn Dachshund Tricks by dachshund_designs	Pipa Poodle Short Story Card by Animatastic

I got a shock looking into domain names last night. The one I particularly wanted to purchase is parked and being offered at $1,000!!!! Quite ridiculous that people/companies can do that!! A similar thing is done in the UK with 'private' car registration numbers. I bought a second hand car once that already had a private plate on it. Apparently, the husband had bought the plate for his wife's car and when the two were splitting up, she decided to leave the registration with the car when selling it to spite him. It's normal in the UK for a car to keep the same number for it's whole lifetime, no matter how often it changes hands. But, I didn't particularly want a registration number that read "H4 RFC" since RFC stands for "Rangers Footbal Club". For one thing I just don't like football (soccer) and for another, I was actually told of someone with a "CFC" (Celtic Football Club) registration number having their car vandalised because of the plate. Because my registration was still the standard format (letter, number, letters) it wasn't too valuable but I did sell it for £250 and got a new, basic registration for around £40, a nice £210 towards the cost of the car.

Cars Lightning McQueen Smiling Disney by disney

Volunteer Fire Truck Firefighter by art1st

Horn Broken Bumper Sticker by Method77

A Little Lighthearted fun, because I feel the need.

And here is some lighthearted stuff from zazzle, who currently have 15% off t-shirts. Enter coupon code BTSRULESHIRT runs until Friday.

fish in 3D by eworks
Browse other prints & posters at zazzle.com

Skull Fairy by creampufart
Design a custom t shirt with zazzle.com

Party Chick - Cool & Fun Ladies T-shirt by Animatastic
Make a custom t shirt on zazzle

Huge 30% off World Famous Brands.

Zazlze.com is offering 30% off World Famous brands in their back to school promo. Unfortunately for us in the UK, it's only applicable to the USA site, though the deep discounts may well make it worthwhile paying the international shipping.

USE PROMO CODE: BTSRULEBRAND

Offer is valid from July 25, 2010 through August 1, 2010 at 11:59pm PT. This offer does not apply to past purchases and may not be combined with any other Zazzle promotional or volume discount offers. If a volume discount applies to your order, you will receive either the discount set forth in this offer or the standard volume discount, whichever is greater. Offer valid on Zazzle.com only.