EK's Star Log

Do guns really make you feel safe?

2008-08-31T01:56:00.001-04:00

McCain's VP choice is an avid fan of the National Rifle Association. I hate guns. Yet people say that guns make them feel safe! Do guns really make you feel safe? I grew up next door to a drunk neighbor who every time he got drunk, he'd grab his rifle and stand in the front yard shooting at everything.... EVERYTHING! trees, cars going by, the clouds... it was scary! Ever since than I have had a morbid hatred of guns. I feel the farthest thing from safe around guns.

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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Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
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Obsessed? I'm Not Obsessed... REALLY, I'm not!

When Next You See Me I'll Look Like This:

Inflation Rant

2008-07-31T23:07:00.000-04:00

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.

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

Obsessed? I'm Not Obsessed... REALLY, I'm not!

When Next You See Me I'll Look Like This:

Happy La Kermeese!

2008-06-26T21:33:00.003-04:00

Happy La Kermeese!

I'm watching the fireworks right now. We got front row seats to the concert and fireworks and we don't even have to leave to house! Can't get out the front door right now, cause there's a Slush Puppy machine and a hot dog stand in the sidewalk. The radio stations are set up in front of my bedroom window. Such excitement going on. I love it.

Wondering: Are any of you guys here tonight? I'm the gal in the purple kimono and white hakam... if you see me wave! :)

For Those who don't know, it's a French festival celebrated in Maine. It celebrates the peace between Maine and Quebec and the mixed heritage of everyone that lives in the area. It's headquarters are in Biddeford Maine, which is a predominately French town, and they close off all of Main Street and the off streets and turn the entire city into a giant carnival.

It looks like the entire population of Quebec is here right now, you should see the traffic!

A green frog is the symbol of the festival, and everyone has got frogs on their shirts and frog hats, and kids are winning stuffed frog prizes at the game stands.

Dog (my cat named Dog) is sitting in the window watching the fireworks... he's fascinated by them.

This is our second year living in Biddeford (we used to live in Old Orchard Beach on the other side of the river), so we've never gotting to see it like this before. We've only seen it after it was open. It opens in a half hour, but they started setting up last night, so we've been watching the whole thing.

They have fireworks off the bridg at 9. We are in the first house off the bridge, overlooking the river, so the fireworks are going to be shot off just a few feet from my window. That ought to be interesting.

EDIT:

They just started. Right now they are singing the National Anthem of the US, they'll do the Canadian one next, and the one for Quebec. Everything the announcer says gets said twice, once in Engligh nd than again in French.

EDIT:

Only in Biddeford! There's a guy with a "trash pick up claw" going around picking up the trash that is grewing steadily on the streets. An elderly man with a cane just came walking by, waked the trash-picker-upper with the cane, and now the two men are duelinging, with cane and trash-pick-up-thing, like it was a sword fight.

EDIT:

I'm back again. Had to go out and watch what was going on out there. The fireworks just ended. Oh it was just amazing! The La Kermeese fireworks are the largest fireworks display in Maine... 4th of July has nothing on La Kermeese. The fireworks are so big andthey shoot them up so high that they can be seen over most of Southern York county. So we always see them no matter where we happen to be when they go off each year. But this year we are living in the first house off the bridge, right on the river's edge, so this year we got to see them up close. And boy did we see them up close! OMG! I've never seen fireworks so close before. They were shooting them off about 50 feet from our front door. I went out on the front porch to watch them. OMG! It sounded like there was a canoon in my brain! That thing they shoot fireworks out of is SO LOUD! Even with tens of thousands of people all talking at once and the big band music playing (live band too!) I couldn't hear them, all I could hear was the firework's canon-thing.

But seeing it was amazing! OMG! It was like we were right inside of the fireworks! They were going up straight over our heads. I've always seen fireworks from a distance, far off, away from the crowd; kind of on a hill "looking down" at the fireworks. But this time I was right underneath them!!!! Boy is that ever a change of perspective! Watching them fan out from underneath, was just undescribably amazing! I wish you guys could have seen it! I've never seen anything like that before!

Well, it's all done down, so I cam back in. The fireworks lasted a full half-hour, and ended with a big "atomic bomb" looking mushroom display that just kept going up higher and higher. It was beautiful! Now the band's playing again. It sounds like an old 1800's ciruse out there, they are playing the old carousel/carvial type music. Like what you hear on a merry-go-round, only it's being played live by a real band... and boy is it loud!

I love La Kermeese.

~~EK

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

ATT: PET FOOD RECALL!

2008-06-22T13:30:00.002-04:00

Here's the FDA report, please read if you have pets: FDA Requests Seizure of Animal Food Products at PETCO Distribution Center

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?

2008-06-06T00:11:00.000-04:00

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

Tell Me About You!

2008-06-05T23:03:00.001-04:00

Yay questions
IF YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST, (MySpace, FaceBook, LJ, CosSpace, or BlogCatalog) I want to know 36 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, or if we already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine ... You're on my list, so I want to know you better!

BE HONEST! COPY FROM HERE, THEN SEND DIRECTLY TO ME IN A COMMENT, THEN REPOST THE EMPTY QUESTIONS. (in your journal)"

1) Are you currently in a serious relationship?
A:

2) What was your dream growing up?
A:

3) What talent do you wish you had?
A:

4) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
A:

5) Favorite vegetable?
A:

6) What was the last book you read?
A:

7) What zodiac sign are you?
A:

8) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
A:

9) Worst Habit?
A:

10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
A:

11) What is your favorite sport?
A:

12) Do you have a Negative or Optimistic attitude?
A:

13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
A:

14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
A:

15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
A:

16) Do you have any pets?
A:

17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?
A:

18) What was your first impression of me? (hmmm...careful!)
A:

19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
A:

20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
A:

21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
A:

22) What color eyes do you have?
A:

23) Ever been arrested?
A:

24) Bottle or can soda?
A:

25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
A:

27) What's your favorite place to hang at?
A:

28) Do you believe in ghosts?
A:

29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
A:

30) Do you swear a lot?
A:

31) Biggest pet peeve?
A:

32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
A:

33) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
A:

35) Do you believe in God?
A:

36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?
A:

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

Random Rant on Links In Comments

2008-06-05T00:11:00.001-04:00

You can tell if it's a real link or not without clicking on it. All you have to do is hover your curser over it, and the URL displays on the bottom panel of your screen (providing you are using WindowsXP... if you have something other than WindowsXP, than I don't think that'll work). If the URL is a blog site such as Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, etc. than it's most likely a real blogger and a real link. Also, Squidoo, MySpace, FaceBook, and FreeWebs, URLs are likely to be real links as well. If you hover over it and it is a random mess (looking something like this: XFDSJMRT4CV KHL5ttyDCK&B66T0F), than you know right away it's going to head to either Porn or medication. Sites not ending in .com, .org, or .ca are all warning signs too.

It's very rare that you'll ever get a REAL comment from a REAL blogger (as opposed to a spambot) which contains a link though. Usually when you do it'll read something like this:

Usually posts like that one are the only ones you'll ever get with a link, that actually go to a real link and not spam. Another one that is common would read like this:

In both of the examples above the reader, is a genuine reader of the blog and they are genuinely trying to help you out. However, blog readers who leave comments like this are rather rare, so while you may get 2 or 3 comments like these each year, you are more likely to get bogged down with spam link comments instead, which is sad really.

On my WordPress blogs, link comments are a nightmare. My biggest blog had 51,000 of them sent to it in 2007 alone. Of those 51,000 comments, I approved less than 40 of them, because all the rest were spam, filled with nothing but lots of links, mostly to porn or medication sites.

The problem occurs occasionally on my MySpace blogs, but not too often.

On my Blogger blogs, however I have yet to ever have a spam comment sent to me. Not a single one since 2004, and I have 7 blogs with Blogger, two of which are pretty big.

I like Blogger best because they clearly have the best spam filters in place. I wonder though, how many non-spam comments does Blogger filter out along with the spam ones?

Another concern is that the site that the link is pointing to can be changed at any time. So it might look legit, and then the owner changes it. That usually only happens on paid blogs with a domain name rather than a free hosted blog. It happens when the owner doesn't make payment on their domain name, say, they paid for 6 months, but than 7 months go by and they don't pay for any more time, so the domain name goes up for sale and next thing you know some spammer has bought it, and the person who bought it (not the original owner who sent you the link) is the one who changes it to a porn site. It is for this reason that on my blogs, I'll approve a link ending in blogspot.com or wordpress.com, but deny one ending in somebody's_name.com. The free hosted blogs are likely to still be there 5 years down the road, but the domain name one, it'll be gone in 6 months.

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

How Did You Change The World Today?

2008-06-03T14:41:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I changed the world, by saving about 30 lives: while on my daily beach walk with my dog, we came upon an entire colony of hermit crabs that had been stranded during low tide and would have died before high tide came back in, so I scoped them all up and took them back down to the water.

I have been doing this for 30+ years now, snails, clams, crabs, eels, starfish, sea worms, fish, jellyfish, once a shark, a few sting rays... I have been told on many occasions that this is pointless, because more will become stranded the next time the tide goes out and I can't save all of them. Well, so what if I can't save all of them, I don't care, but I'm not going to see an animal in need and not help it either. You have to be pretty cruel to see a helpless being (animal or human), who asks you for help and you just keep walking because, you don't see what good it would do to help them.

To many people think of changing the world in big ways, but think too big and never change anything. The world will change faster if more folks looked for little things they could do to change the world, as part of their daily lives.

Think big, but don't act, changes nothing.

Think small, act on it, and change everything.

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

Idiot Dog Owners on The Beach.... GRRRR

2008-06-03T13:35:00.004-04:00

OMG! I hate dog owners who let their dogs run lose... I was just complaining about this yesterday. I love dogs.

We live walking distance from the beach and so 3 or 4 times a week, we head for the beach. This is Buddy's favorite past time, he can spend hours in the water, chasing tennis balls, and chewing up clam shells. On the beach Buddy is on a 20' lead and a 4' leash. The 20' lead lets him run after balls, while the 4' leash, lets me hold him to my side in case he has one of his attack moods.

Here's the problem, which got me to complaining about dogs not on leash yesterday:

The first thing you see when you step on the board walk is a huge sign:

You notice how they put the dogs on leash in big bold print? Well, that's because there are 2 million people on this beach once summer goes full swing, and the town has been having massive problems with unleashed dogs running up to people, chasing small children, killing seagulls, and in some cases biting people. A lot of dogs have been put to sleep as a result.

The beach is 7 miles long, and near the pier where the most people are, dogs are not allowed at all, however, on the far end of the beach a gully divides the beach in half, leaving a 3 mile section that most people never go on, and dog owners are allowed to take there dogs down there. That's where the sign is.

Dogs are every where down there, 90% of the dog owners are pretty good and use long leads to let their dogs run free while still being on a leash, that way they can pull their dog in should he start heading for trouble. These dog owners are great, they walk around with poop scoopers and doggie bags and are really good about making sure that their dogs obey the laws of the beach.

The other 10% of dog owners are awful and ruin it for the rest of us. Take yesterday for example:

Me and Buddy were on the beach, we saw a group of dogs down by the gully so I took Buddy the other direction, since Buddy does not play well with other dogs. Believe me looks are very deceiving in Buddy's case, and that is his biggest problem, and the problem we had yesterday.

The group was 3 women in there 50's - 60's and each had a dog, none on a leash. One of the women saw me and Buddy, some 50 yards away, and did the unthinkable: she pointed us out to her dog and yelled out: "Look at that cute little puppy, go play with him!"... Her dog quickly responded by running full gallop in the direction the woman was pointing, straight for Buddy. Buddy who seconds ago was happily bouncing in the waves, saw the strange dog running for him, and turned full monster baring his teeth and ready to kill. Luckily for both dogs, Buddy weighs a minor 35lbs and I slung him over my shoulder and out of the other dog's path.

The other dog was very playful and took no notice that Buddy was about to tear him to shreds. The women were all laughing and saying "How cute!". The other two dogs were now running after the first one. I told them to call their dogs off, because Buddy was an aggressive rescue dog and still being tamed, and they just went "Oooooh but he's so cute." Yea, he's cute, he's tiny, and he has in the past taken down 100lb dogs 4 times his size in a matter of seconds because he goes straight for the throat. The vet says that because he is so small, he feels threatened, and that is why he attacks things bigger than himself. She said as long as he feels safe, he's a perfectly calm dog, it's only when he feels threatened that he becomes violent. Well, for a little dog like Buddy, there is nothing more threatening than a big 70lb dog galloping full speed straight for him.

I don't blame their dog. He was just a big goofy thing doing what him momma told him to do. I can't believe the nerve of that woman! Do these women even have brains? They certainly were not using them, that's for sure. Who in their right mind would do such a stupid thing? Cute or not, big or small, ANY dog will attack if another dog who they have never seen before suddenly starts running towards them. What were they thinking?!?! These women were so stupid. What they did was 100% totally irresponsible. If I hadn't held Buddy at bay over my shoulder (which believe me is no easy task, not when he's ready to kill, he's hard to hold down.) her dog would have been seriously wounded or even dead in a few seconds flat.

I know this dog and I know how to handle him and keep him calm, it's my job to help him to not be an aggressive dog anymore, but when irresponsible people do things like this, they are not making that job easy, and they are just asking for trouble. Only a total moron would send their dog to go play with a strange dog they didn't know!

Well, later on that same day, after me and Buddy had put about a mile between ourselves and those idiotic women, we saw yet another irresponsible dog owner on the beach. Or rather, we saw the dog and not the owner. A little kid, maybe 3 years old was playing in the gully (speaking of irresponsible, where were his parents... 3 people drowned in that gully last year alone!) and a big black dog came running up across the beach and aimed straight for the kid! OMG! His parents came running down after, and the dog owner came running from the other direction, but both parents and owner, were a good half mile from the dog and the kid. Who in their right mind lets a dog run loose on the beach and worse, what kind of a parent lets their toddler wander that far off AND go swimming in the rapids of a dangerous gully?

OMG! The things I see when I'm on the beach! It's no wonder so many kids drown and so many people hate dog owners, what with idiots like those wandering around!

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

What are you doing today?

2008-06-02T07:26:00.002-04:00

Just wondering what everyone plans to do today. (A post that proves I'm either bored or nosy!)

What am I doing? Well, at this very moment I am writing a post about what I am doing this very moment! LOL!

I just got done watching InuYasha on Adult Swim... Sesshomaru was on there today... YAY!

Now I'm getting up and checking my online stuff... blogs, Squidoo, etc.

I have to go to court today (I was summunded as a witness to a case, but I'm not sure why they think I'm a witness, cause I don't really know to much about the case... oh well, I guess I'll find out what they want when I get there.)

Later today I have to go out and buy catfood, cat litter, and grain (for the hens).

After that, I'll come back home and try to get some work done on My Lord Sesshomaru costume.

And that's what I'm doing today.

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

Massive Lost of Posts on Star Log White!!!!

2008-06-02T06:33:00.002-04:00

As you may have heard me say earlier, Star Log (White edition) suddenly and without explanation vanished off the internet, taking with it it's just under 3,000 posts. I used the post drafts which were saved on my hard drive to Create my Blogger blogs. Unfortunately that was less than half of the 3,000 posts that were on Star Log White.

Today I get an email from WordPress, saying that they are sorry for the inconvenance, but Star Log White was shut down because it was reported for being in violation of their ToS, for posting "Blogvertise" links!! ??? WTH? What is a Blogvertise and how are there links to it on my blog?

Well, anyways they said they had just reviewed my blog, and found that it had been falsely accussed, they said they ran a scan and personally checked individual posts, but could not find any Blogvertise links on my blog. Well, of course not! I'm not out there plastering my blog with affiliate links! I hate blogs that blink with ads all over them, so why would I do that to my own blog!

*sheesh*

Well, come to find out, someone had posted a comment on my blog, and THEIR LINK, was going back to a blog with blogvertise on it and my blog was deleted, because I had approved the comment linking back to their blog! ACK! WTH?!?

Anyways, WordPress apologized and restored my blog. Well finally! What's it been, like 6 months now?

So I go to WordPress and see if they restored my blog and they had, but now it says it only has 982 posts on it! OMG! That blog has been going since 2004, and I was posting daily at a rate of 4 or 5 posts per day, and when it vanished it had 2,700+ posts on it! Where are the rest of the posts!?!

Well, I'm importing the posts off my 7 Blogger blogs over to there, so that should restore some of them, and add a few new ones as well, but why did more than half of the posts vanish off my blog? Has this ever happened to anyone else?

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

What Is The Best Type of Blog?

2008-05-31T14:13:00.002-04:00

I keep see the same basic question asked on several forums. People wanting to start a blog, but not sure what to start. So, I got to thinking about it and here is what I have to say:

I think the best blogs are niche topic blogs... say you have 3 hobbies: stamp collecting, candle making, and beach combing. You could than make 4 blogs:

1. Your personal Blog about everyday things

2. A blog that offers advice and info about stamps

3. A blog where you post candle making how tos and tips

4. A blog where you post pics of what you found on the beach each day

This is what I do. I create lots of little niche blogs. As a result I have 32 blogs. I have my one personal blog for all sorts of random stuff, than I have a blog about fiction writing, and one for sewing costumes, and one for book reviews... you get the idea right?

By focusing on one topic only, you get a more targeted audience, and better chances of readers who well keep coming back once they've found you. Niche blogs don't get as much traffic, but for me, I'd rather write a niche blog that has value and meaning to someone where they learn something and can ask for advice, rather than a blog that seeks traffic and serves no real purpose at all, and never helps anyone.

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!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Ekography: EelKats Lensography and be sure to find out about
My Lord Sesshomaru Costume!

Why are some people so mean?

2008-05-29T00:08:00.001-04:00

Why are some people so mean?

Actually, I think sleep has a lot to do with it. Think about it, a mother has to get up at 6 to cook breakfast, get the kids up and dressed, drive them to school, make sure husband is up in time to get to work, get ready for work, drive to work, deal with fellow workers and costumers. Slave at work so long that the kids are forced to get a ride or take the bus home, so she misses out on hearing the news of the day (which by the time she gets home the kids have told someone else so see no need to tell her).

Than when she does get home her husband expects her to wash the laundry, vacuum the floors, pick up his work cloths which he threw on the floor because he was in a hurry to turn on the tv and watch some stupid game while getting drunk, than complains if it's past 6 o'clock and she hasn't cooked supper yet. Than his parents drop by at 9 o'clock and refuse to leave, she doesn't get to bed till midnight, and she had no time to rest no time to take a break, and she's barely asleep before the alarm goes off and the day starts all over again. She's tired, she lacks sleep, she's irritated, she's aching, and she's ready to snap at the drop of a pin.

Well, that's just one scenario, but you get the idea, right?

People live hectic busy lives, and have no time for rest and relaxation anymore, and I think that if you go too long in the same old stressed out situations over and over again, with out ever having any time to just stop and rest, you end up getting mean and rude, with out even realizing it.

Of course there are lots of other reasons too, but I think this is the most common one.

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!

If you liked this post, than you might like what I say on my other blog too!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Need To Publish Your First Novel?
Ekography: EelKats Lensography
What Can You Do With Squidoo?
Save the Goldeneagle
Copper Cockeral
EKs Link Exchange Headquarters
Creating Character Profiles
How to Start a Publishing Company
Create Your Own Writers Retreat
Need to Kill Writer's Block? Kill a Character.
Narration for Writers
Doctor Who Gift & Video Showcase
NaNoWriMo: Reaching 50,000 useing EelKats 13 Step method
Conventional Writing Advice that Didnt Work for Her (or Me Either!)...
Why Was My Manuscript Rejected?
What if you could give a lie detector test to..
Etiole Swanzen
Harlequin books seeks real men for covers
EelKats Birthday Party Lensography
What do you look for in a book?
Accepting Your Writing Style
Whats On Your Toilet?

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

Should You Use CafePress or Zazzle?

2008-03-06T06:26:00.000-05:00

I started out with CafePress, and over the years I've made more money via CafePress. I have been on CafePress longer than Zazzle and have made more money because CafePress ALWAYS let you set your own commision (Zazzle only started doing it for the Christmas season 2007... CafePress had the option like 7 years ago.)

I esp love that Zazzle no longer only pays you just 10%. ugh! For years I've made next to nothing on Zazzle cause I couldn't set my own commision, but now I can set my own commision and I'm starting to make money now!

I love the new Zazzle Merch booth! Now I can create 10, 20, or 30 products at a time! No more creating one item at a time for me! (CafePress always had that option too. With CafePress you can create as many as 80 products all at once.)

Useing Zazzle's Merchbooth I created over 400 new products for my gallery this week alone! It used to be slow to create stuff, cause you could only create one item at a time, and for the longest time I only has 15 items in my gallaery cause I got so bored with the slow creation process, but since they added Merchbooth, now I have over 2,000 products in my gallery! I love it!

One problem I have had though, is on dial-up I could only load one picture at a time on Zazzle, because they use Java pop-ups to load images and they took over 20 minutes to load each picture. So for the first few years I used CafePress almost exclusivly, because it was so hard to load images to Zazzle's site. I got cable a little over a year ago, and since than I've had no problems loading images to Zazzle anymore, so if you have dial-up you might find CafePress a lot easier to use.

If you're just starting out I'd recommend you use CafePress first, because they are much more "user friendly" for the begginer. Zazzle has more steps and the instructions are not as clearly stated as CafePress' are. Once you've made a few shops on CafePess though, you should have no problems understanding Zazzle, because they are basicly the same.

It's to your advantage to have both, because while they both have t-shirts, cards, mugs and buttons, most of their other items do not overlap.

Zazzle has USPostal Service approved custom postage stamps and CafePress does not. Zazzle also has neck-ties, keyrings, and other items.

Plus CafePress has some pretty cool products that Zazzle doesn't have: ceramic tiles, jewlery boxes, dog shirts, clocks, pillows, etc.

I've found the quality of the items to be pretty much the same. I've bought T-shirts, buttons, mugs, mousepads, and totebags from both Zazzle and CafePress and both have super quality.

Shipping tends to be a lot faster with CafePress though. Usually I get orders from CafePress in less than 2 weeks, (3-4 days is average), but Zazzle I usually have to wait 2 or 3 weeks before I get the items.

The payout is basicly the same for each: Both require a minimum income of $25 before they well send you a check. Both mail out the pay checks at the end of each month. Both have a waiting period of 40 - 60 days after the order was made, to allow for returns, before they credit the money to your account. Both have the option to credit your pay towards your next order if you choose that option. Both pay you by sending a paper check in the mail.

CafePress only pays by check in the mail.

Starting January 2008, Zazzle now pays you via your PayPal account, if you have one. (Payments were just sent out last night btw, I just got my February payout of $44.36)

CafePress has a much better forum for members. The CafePress forum is pretty much the same as SquidU is for Squidoo, you go on and start threads and get advice from other members just like you would here for Squidoo.

But Zazzle's forum is more like Twitter or an YahooIM chat, and is really pointless to join, because it's just a single page with one sentance quotes flashing acrossed it everytime someone says anything, and so no post really makes any sence at all.

Zazzle has lots of promotion features, including giving you html codes for each of your products in both image or text (and the image code has three image size options). Plus they have a couple of differant style widgets that you can put on your blog or on MySpace that are updated live everytime you add a new product.

CafePress has only one promotional html code and it's a banner with a green star on it that goes to their homepage and not to your store or items.

So, as you can see, each has it's good points, and each has it's bad points. Both are good though, so I use them both.

Here are likes to one of each "style" of mine, so you can compare what they look like:

A Free CafePress Shop (layout can not be edited, they all look like this)

http://www.cafepress.com/GothSkullHearts

A paid CafePress shop ($54 a year) (layout can be edited like a blog or like MySpace profiles):

http://www.cafepress.com/copper_cockerel

A Free Zazzle Gallery (ALL Zazzle galleries are free, they don't have a paid account option) (the layou can be edited to what you want it to look like):

http://www.zazzle.com/eelkat*

(I love pink and orange layouts, I guess you can tell, cause my CafePress, my Zazzle, my LuLu, and my MySpace are all that same color combo. It's kind of my sig color.)

Well, that should help you out some.

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!

If you liked this post, than you might like what I say on my other blog too!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Need To Publish Your First Novel?
Ekography: EelKats Lensography
What Can You Do With Squidoo?
Save the Goldeneagle
Copper Cockeral
EKs Link Exchange Headquarters
Creating Character Profiles
How to Start a Publishing Company
Create Your Own Writers Retreat
Need to Kill Writer's Block? Kill a Character.
Narration for Writers
Doctor Who Gift & Video Showcase
NaNoWriMo: Reaching 50,000 useing EelKats 13 Step method
Conventional Writing Advice that Didnt Work for Her (or Me Either!)...
Why Was My Manuscript Rejected?
What if you could give a lie detector test to..
Etiole Swanzen
Harlequin books seeks real men for covers
EelKats Birthday Party Lensography
What do you look for in a book?
Accepting Your Writing Style
Whats On Your Toilet?

All donations to Star Log go to The Pidgie 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!

-------------

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

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!

If you liked this post, than you might like what I say on my other blog too!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Need To Publish Your First Novel?
Ekography: EelKats Lensography
What Can You Do With Squidoo?
Save the Goldeneagle
Copper Cockeral
EKs Link Exchange Headquarters
Creating Character Profiles
How to Start a Publishing Company
Create Your Own Writers Retreat
Need to Kill Writer's Block? Kill a Character.
Narration for Writers
Doctor Who Gift & Video Showcase
NaNoWriMo: Reaching 50,000 useing EelKats 13 Step method
Conventional Writing Advice that Didnt Work for Her (or Me Either!)...
Why Was My Manuscript Rejected?
What if you could give a lie detector test to..
Etiole Swanzen
Harlequin books seeks real men for covers
EelKats Birthday Party Lensography
What do you look for in a book?
Accepting Your Writing Style
Whats On Your Toilet?

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

Should You Have a Squidoo Lensography?

2008-03-02T00:54:00.003-05:00

Today's topic of thought: Lensographies.

I have several of these.

I'll write 5 or 6 (or 20 or 30 in some cases) lenses on a single topic, and than I'll create a Lensography (lens index) lens where I link all of those lenses together.

The biggest advantage to this is I can create a series of lenses, say on the art of writing (which I did), and each lens featues a differant aspect of the art of writing: one talks about self-publishing, one talks about creating characters, one talks about ways around wtier's block, one talks about free writing contests, one talks about copyright laws, etc, etc, etc. In the end I created more than 30 lenses all focusing on the art of writing, and though they all are for authors and freelancers, each is totally differant and focuses on a differant area of the writing field.

Okay, so with 30+ lenses that means I have to now to SEO 30 times more than if I had created one lens right? That's where the Lensography comes in. I put links to all of my writing lenses, on one lens, and now all I have to do is focus on the SEO for that lens only, because once someone reaches that one lens, they now have a direct link to all of my other lenses on writing.

I do this two ways:

1) TOPIC LENSOGRAPHIES: I have a Lensography for each topic (series of lenses on that tpic). Currenlt I have a lens index for my Writing lenses, one for my Halloween lenses, one for my Party Planning lenses, and I'm building one for my Book and Movie Review lenses.

2.) PROFILE LENSOGRAPHIES: I have a personal Lensography (see here: http://www.squidoo.com/Ekography ) which is an idex of each and every one of my lenses. When I started this lens, I had less than 20 lenses, so it was quite small. Today I have 224 lenses and my Lensography lens is huge as a result, however, all I have to do now is to promote this one lens to bring traffic (readers) to all of my other lenses.

Now to answer your question, does it work? Yes! My lensography has never been below the 5,000 mark on the lensrank, and usually it stays in the top 700, sometimes it's gets near the top 100, but has yet to be in the top 100 list, though lenses I have featured at the top of my lensography HAVE gotten into the top 100 list, and looking at where the traffic to those came from (in the stats page) I find that it was my lesnography that drove a lot of the traffic to them.

I promote my lensography EVERYWHERE: on MySpace, on my 32 blogs, on FaceBook, on MyLot, in the sig links on my posts for each of the over 150 forums I reguraly post on, I even leave it on post-it notes in local public bathrooms! When I sign up for something and the site asks for my homepage, I always type in my lensography URL, because I consider that to be my homepage. As a result of all this, I have a constant and steady stream of traffic flowing into my lensography, and because my lensography links to all of my 224 lenses, I do nothing to promote any of my other lenses at all. I promote one lens and one lens only. This one: http://www.squidoo.com/Ekography and it sends it's heavy traffic flow out to all of my other lenses.

If you only have one or two lenses than, no, you don't need a lensography, but I tell everyone with more than ten lenses, to build one, because it's the best way there is to promote your other lenses.

I've got a series of lenses for writers (about 30 lenses so far) and another series for Halloween costumes (about 10 lenses so far), another series for parties -mostly birthdays- (about 60 lenses started, only 7 are published yet though), a series of seven lenses each one featuring a differant color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink) which I am currently expanding, a series of bios for characters from Don Rosa's Uncle Scrooge family tree, and my personal fave is the The Twighlight Manor Press series, which features lenses about anything to do with The Twighlight Manor Press (includes company profile lens, book review lenses, character profile lenses, and overview of products for sale lenses)

Right now I have 224 lenses, of them I think less than 30 of them are NOT a part of a series. I love doing lenses in topic series, and that's basicly my mode of creation.

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!

If you liked this post, than you might like what I say on my other blog too!

Want to read more? Check out my Squidoo Lenses:

Need To Publish Your First Novel?
Ekography: EelKats Lensography
What Can You Do With Squidoo?
Save the Goldeneagle
Copper Cockeral
EKs Link Exchange Headquarters
Creating Character Profiles
How to Start a Publishing Company
Create Your Own Writers Retreat
Need to Kill Writer's Block? Kill a Character.
Narration for Writers
Doctor Who Gift & Video Showcase
NaNoWriMo: Reaching 50,000 useing EelKats 13 Step method
Conventional Writing Advice that Didnt Work for Her (or Me Either!)...
Why Was My Manuscript Rejected?
What if you could give a lie detector test to..
Etiole Swanzen
Harlequin books seeks real men for covers
EelKats Birthday Party Lensography
What do you look for in a book?
Accepting Your Writing Style
Whats On Your Toilet?

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