A CLEAN CAT IS A HAPPY CAT

A clean cat is a happy cat...a clean cat's owner...maybe not!

No matter how good Pieper is at cleaning herself, she always has something to share with me later...also known as "the hairball!"

It's a good thing that cats don't normally need baths (although I've heard there are some who love them) because Pieper would NOT be a clean kitty...but generally kitties clean themselves quite well with their rough tongues. They spend about 30 percent of their time grooming themselves (how is that possible when they sleep 90 percent of the time?).

Nevertheless, all cats benefit from regular grooming. Longhaired cats should be brushed once a day, shorthairs, once a week. Pie loves to hold onto the brush and just rub the sides of her face against the bristles. She fairly purrs doing it...all she needs me for is to hold the brush! I tried putting velcro on the wall at about her level, but no, she likes me holding the brush better!

Anyway, supposedly having us groom them lessens the chances of them swallowing too much fur and leaving us gifts...LOL.

PIEPER'S PLACE NOW MAKES CUSTOM BOOKMARKS

Need a special gift? How about a set of five bookmarks, personalized with pictures of a cat (or dog) you love, check out Pieper's Place booth at Bonanzle to see bookmarks like the ones pictured above. You simply e-mail me your favorite pictures. Pieper and I will fit them to bookmarks, add sayings, and put them in heavy-duty plastic covers with coordinated ribbons in the top. The price is $10.00 for five personalized bookmarks! Don't forget Mother's Day! Easter! Or that Special Birthday!

BRAINSTORMING BONANZLE

BRAINSTORMING BONANZLE – MONDAY MARCH 16, 2009

Bonanzle booth owners and other interested parties gathered last night at the Brainstorming Bonanzle podcast, hosted by auctionwally and attheboutique. We meet every Monday night at www.talkshoe.com at 8:00 p.m. EST for a two hour community discussion; on alternating weeks, we have special guests – either Bonanzle booth owners or others in the ecommerce business world.

Last night, we were delighted to welcome John (ColderICE.com) Lawson, the CEO of 3rd Power Outlet and a Platinum PowerSeller on eBay. John spoke to us about social media, i.e., using YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other network services to promote our businesses.

One of the more interesting facts I learned was that YouTube is actually a more popular search engine than Google! I had never thought of looking up information on YouTube…have you? I always thought YouTube was for fun stuff, like watching cats play the piano, or people falling all over themselves. I never spent much time there because I never had much time to spare! Now I find that you can search for just about anything there and find out something about it just by viewing a video that someone has made.

John named three components that we can use to network: words, voice and video (which we just mentioned). Words would be blogs, voice is chat rooms and forums.

About blogs: John said that a blog is three things – not about YOU, not about YOUR STORE, and not a MONOLOGUE. I respectfully disagree with him on this point. I think a blog is about YOU – it is a revelation into your character, your beliefs and your world view; it’s about what you care about, what means something to you; what makes you “turn on.” Is this a bad thing for potential clients to know? I don’t think so. The Internet is very impersonal and quite scary when you hear some of the things that happen there. Building a following in a blog should be about people getting to know the real you!

Another, and more important point, is that you, as an ecommerce business person, need to define what works for you. If you aren’t comfortable with a blog, but love to mess with your video camera, do YouTube videos about your products or ways to use them. If you’re scared of Twitter, have tried it and found it not to your liking, then don’t do it. If you love Facebook or MySpace and are comfortable there, then by all means use it.

I always come away from Brainstorming Bonanzle with a head buzzing with ideas; it takes a couple of days to digest everything. Open forum nights are also very productive – last week we talked about the changes on Bonanzle which enhanced our selling abilities. If you’re interested in talking, you call in and share your ideas or thoughts via phone.

For me, the bottom line is get moving – don’t just THINK forever about which direction to go – just go. If it’s not for me, then I can turn back and try something else.

“You’ll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind.” (Thanks to my friend, Susan (Renagade), who twittered this quote this morning!