Just another beautiful day here in Grandma's Attic. The sun is shinning through the window, and I am inspired to give an account of my latest work done with the site (www.buygrandmasattic.com). I have been pretty busy this past week, and am working very hard to get our site known. Before I talk about the improvements I have made to the site, let me first tell about some interesting things that happened this past week.First, a couple of days ago, I received a call from a man asking if we sold clothes. My response was that we sold for other people. And although I have decided to expand our clothing and apparel section, I really don't have much there yet. The man said okay, and then hung up. Now, I am not sure what he was really looking for, as he hung up to quickly (before I had the chance to ask), but one thing is for sure: I am starting to see results (albeit slow) of my marketing endeavors. What I did get from the call was this: it was a local call; he called my cell phone; he knew something about my business. What I didn't know was where he heard of me or where he obtained my business card. The reason I believe that it had to be from my business card is that it is only on my business cards that had my cell number. Additionally, my cards have been passed out to many people by myself, as well as through other friends and at selected locations that I have placed card holders. It is good to know that I am starting to see some results from my efforts of my work.The next thing happened just yesterday (10/29). I had gone in to pay the rent at one of my storage locations. This is also one of the locations that I had permission to leave some of my business cards. Although she (the manager) couldn't always keep my cards on the counter because of her boss, she had them on her desk to hand out. We had started a conversation concerning a former tenant. It would seem that this tenant had left behind several boxes of "mint condition" Playboy magazines from (starting in) the 1970's. Apparently, many of the issues were also collectors editions, and she was looking to sell them. She said that she may wish to use my services: particularly with the ability to list on eBay. I suggested that probably the best method would be to create a consignment agreement (which I already have the form). With this method, I told her that if the items(s) sold, great, but if they didn't, she would not have any out of pocket expenses: with exception of what ever the eBay charges were to list her sale. I also told her that, being that it didn't cost her anything to procure the items(s) for sale, anything she made from the sale would be pure profit. The only thing that is of issue is if I actually want to list the items on my site. My opinion is not to, but I will have to give it some careful consideration.Now getting back to some of what I have been doing for the site. I have been working with getting an Affiliate program established for my site. What this will be is and INBOUND program. In another words, when a person or company include a link or banner on their web site, and a person clicks through to my site, they can earn money for referrals and sales that are generated because of their referral. I am still in the process, of establishing this, and I have been stopped in my progress because of a coding issue (can't figure out where the code is supposed to go on my site). I hope to have this done with in the next week or so, so watch out for our news release on our site, or here for more information. In addition to my inbound affiliate program that I am in the works of, I have also been adding other affiliates to my site. I have quite a few that I have been approved to place on my site, and will continue to do so as space permits.The one big thing that I did this week that wasn't directly connected to the site, was the creation of my Advertisers Application and Agreement. In this form, a person givers certain information about them self, their company (if appropriate) and what they would like to advertise on our site. The document was created in MS Word, using tables and forms items (mostly text & check boxes). This has been (and will continue to be) a work in progress: as I am not very familiar with this aspect of Word, and I have been trying to learn as I go. In addition to the application/agreement section" I have also included an addendum to the document (an optional section) for people who wish to also have their listing on eBay. Once I completed the form to my satisfaction, I uploaded it to my site, so that people can download it. At first, when you clicked on a link to download it, it actually opened up the form. Although this is good, it wasn't what I wanted. I just wanted people to download it, fill it out, and then attach a saved copy in an e-mail back to me. So I contacted the host of my site (CityMax.com) and found out how I could create the download page to work as I wanted it to. I created the appropriate pages, with a links page tying them together. The next problem that I noticed (subsequently) was that when you opened the file, and clicked on a form box, you couldn't enter any text. I think that is because I had locked the form. I will be making the change to that shortly. You can now download any form or document that I have on the site from our Documents & Forms page (new). This will be handy if you want to download say, our most current Privacy Policy, (which you can now download it in both .doc or .pdf format). However, some of the files on this page may only be in one or the other format. If you don't have a pdf reader, you can download a free version from our site (you will be taken to Adobe to do this).
Successfully Yours,
John A. Shachter
President & CEO
"Things May Come To Those Who Wait...
...But Only The Things Left By Those Who Hustle!!"
- Abraham Lincoln
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