Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Advertise Your Business

Member of OnLineAuction.com are very creative when it comes to advertising their stores and their on line selling sites. I got the idea to do this blog from one of them and then others chimed in with their ideas, so I am sharing their thoughts and ideas with you.

From Dustycorners I got the idea and she will be the first one you will read.

I listen to a crafty radio show twice a month (similar to ola radio) and they talk about advertising your business, marketing, do's and don'ts and other things.

This morning one member typed in the chat that she needed help on something and I waited but no one else took the lead. So, in short conversation, I advertised where I sell and she will visit this site & check it out.

Take every opportunity you can to get your business name out there!

One member mentioned while they were shopping in a craft store they found a business card advertising jewelry supplies stuck in a jewelry project magazine. You would need to be discreet, of course, while doing this. But you get the idea

Standing in line at the grocery store, post office, DMV office, anywhere!, just strike up a conversation with someone close to you. That person may not be that interested, but maybe someone close over hears your conversation and would be interested.
Pass out business cards while you are waiting!
Be sure to smile and not appear to be pushy. Wink
You could advertise something you give away free on the back of the business card to get them interested in coming to your store.

I am going to practice passing out business cards more than in the past. I may put 25% off first item purchase. With limits, of course, because you don't want to be cutting into your profit of a single item. Or maybe give away something with their first purchase (customers like the word FREE!) with discounts on repeat business.

Do you have an OLA pin? Wear it! Someone just may ask what that is Smile I think I am going to make some wooden pins with my business card image and clip it on my jacket. People notice those things:)

The market changes constantly, even on a local level & today's buyers are looking for a bargain. Give them something that makes them feel like they found a treasure before someone else did.
Remember when you were a kid, and found something you thought was fantastic, then couldn't wait to tell your friends because you found it and they didn't. Kinda like that.
Get them talking!

I would like to see what other members are doing in their own area to promote their business. You can visit her store at http://ola.com/store/dustycorners


The next one came from Aesthetiics48

Good Ideas Dusty Very Happy

I was thinking that I would start making and including some magnetic business cards in my packages. Sort of makes a little gift and people use them on their refrigerators.

I used to do that with my hair dressing business.

You can see all her items she promotes by going to http://ola.com/store/aesthetics48

The next entry came from me chateycathey

Dusty I agree with everything you said and I do it all. However I never thought to write on the back of the card about a free gift or discount. I leave cards everywhere I go even put them on top of tips at restaurants while we travel. I am now gonna write on the back of the card (only as I hand it to them as would make them feel special) offering a percentage off first purchase with a code they need to mention on it. Not going to do that with cards I leave at rest areas. Will put on those to be sure to check for special sales all through the year. We drive OLA everywhere we go as I had Large OLA magnets made for both sides of the van or truck, which ever one we decide to take. So Ola goes where we go and we have had lots of people ask us what it means and there is my chance to talk with them and give them a card "special" just for them. Thanks for posting this and reminding some and giving me new ideas. Super and you should do a Blog about this on the ola team blog. Now that would be great. Thanks
You can check out my items at http://ola,com/store/chateycathey

The next one came from curiocache

Most definitely blog-worthy! There is/was a big huge slot machine in Circus Circus a couple of years ago that was an Ebay game! I had some of Davendebs stickers with me, and it took all my will power not to cover it with them! (then I remembered the whole camera thing, and thought I better not....)  Visit her at http://ola.com/store/curiocache
Of course she had offers to bail her out.

The next one comes from American-Hippie

One of my favorite tricks is to put OLA Postcards into magazines at the doctors and dentist office. I tuck them in tight so they don't fall out and get thrown away by the staff.

My absolute favorite trick is to take OLA Postcards and tape them to the back of bathroom stall doors. When a woman is sitting there, that card will get her full attention because, well, there's nothing else around! If I don't have OLA Postcards, I use my business cards that carry the OLA Logo. The cool thing about putting those cards on the backs of the doors (besides getting attention from the seated woman) is that housekeepers don't look at the back of the door when they check for cleanliness or toilet paper refilling... so it's taped there until someone pulls it off to use. I do this at rest stops, casinos, restaurants, anywhere there are stall doors.

You can check her out at http://ola.com/store/AmericanHippie



I am sure there are more and as they list them on different pages I will list them in another blog. You have to admit these people are serious about what they do and where they do it. They are all very good at it and have great ideas on how to promote themselves and http://ola.com/

Let us know in the chats if you have some ideas we may all use that are not mentioned here and be sure to visit their stores and see what great items they have to offer you

Inventions by Women

I did not realize that women played such a huge part in the world of inventions! According to Fact Monster, this is a just a partial list of inventions by women:

Alphabet blocks Adeline D. T. Whitney 1882

Apgar tests, which evaluate a baby’s health upon birth Virginia Apgar 1952

Chocolate-chip cookies Ruth Wakefield 1930

Circular saw Tabitha Babbitt 1812

Dishwasher Josephine Cochran 1872

Disposable diaper Marion Donovan 1950

Electric hot water heater Ida Forbes 1917

Elevated railway Mary Walton 1881

Engine muffler El Dorado Jones 1917

Fire escape Anna Connelly 1887

Globes Ellen Fitz 1875

Ironing board Sarah Boone 1892

Kevlar, a steel-like fiber used in radial tires, crash helmets, and bulletproof vests Stephanie Kwolek 1966

Life raft Maria Beaseley 1882

Liquid Paper®, a quick-drying liquid used to correct mistakes printed on paper Bessie Nesmith 1951

Locomotive chimney Mary Walton 1879

Medical syringe Letitia Geer 1899

Paper-bag-making machine Margaret Knight 1871

Rolling pin Catherine Deiner 1891

Rotary engine Margaret Knight 1904

Scotchgard™ fabric protector Patsy O. Sherman 1956

Snugli® baby carrier Ann Moore 1965

Street-cleaning machine Florence Parpart 1900

Submarine lamp and telescope Sarah Mather 1845

Windshield wiper Mary Anderson 1903

I can certainly understand some of the inventions. After all, who did the dishes, carried the baby, rolled out the pie crust, ironed the clothes and baked the cookes? According to Fact Monster a lot of inventions were never credited to women because they could not hold a patent in their name. Therefore, a lot of husbands got the credit!

I tried finding some of these items and came up with some interesting, if not exact, items for you to check out today!! We have the following listed on OnlineAuction.com right now!!


GLASS ROLLING PIN ~VINTAGE~e9901~free shipping from PWittsStuff! Nice, huh? And shipping is free!!


I love this one from RoundPrairie2-


And of course, the great old fashioned wooden rolling pin,
ROLL PIN,CANN. ITEMS,BRUSH,CROCK,SALAD SET,KITCHEN ITEM from ClarksAntiques, and they have tons more collectables!!


Now this is a huge dishwasher,
Hobart Dishwasher from cre1252abc and they have some other big ticket items!


Not exactly the alphabet blocks first invented but this great pattern
Alphabet Blocks - The Sailing Ships - Cross Stitch from Amber_2431 will bring lots of enjoyment to the cross stitcher!!


I was tickled pink to see these!! How about
Earrings Globe Dangle Earrings from ZannesBazaar!!! Now here are some globes!!! And she has LOTS of great earrings and other jewelry just waiting for you to look at!!


Ok, not exactly the ironing BOARD but this is a great collectable, a


And this is a great gadget for the ironing board, too!! A POLDER WALL MOUNT IRON BOARD & IRON STORAGE BNIB from Plusizeglamor!



And of course, the windshield wiper! Ok, just the arm and it's a rear wiper assembly!! This is a

I am always amazed at what I find on OLA.com! Check it out for yourself!

If this isn't what you are looking for, I invite you over to visit our store~KornKountryTreasures!!

Thank you!

MUSIC MADE IN GERMANY: KLAUS SCHULZE


Hello my friends,
here is another fantastic German artist: KLAUS SCHULZE. (Do I need to mention that I have all of his releases?)
Klaus Schulze (born 4 August 1947) is a German electronic music composer and musician. He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried. He was briefly a member of the electronic bands Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel before launching a solo career consisting of more than 60 albums released across five decades.
In 1969, Klaus Schulze was the drummer of one of the early incarnations of Tangerine Dream for their debut album Electronic Meditation. Before 1969 he was a drummer in a band called Psy Free. He met Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream in the ZODIAC CLUB in Berlin in that time West-Germany. In 1970 he left this group to form Ash Ra Tempel with Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke. In 1971, he chose again to leave a newly-formed group after only one album, this time to mount a solo career. In 1972, Schulze released his debut album Irrlicht with organ and a recording of an orchestra filtered almost beyond recognition. Despite the lack of synthesizers, this proto-ambient work is regarded as a milestone in electronic music. The follow-up, Cyborg, was similar but added the EMS Synthi A synthesizer.Since this point, Schulze's career has been most prolific, and he can now claim more than 40 original albums to his name since Irrlicht. Highlights of these include 1975's Timewind, 1976's Moondawn (his first album to feature the Moog modular synthesizer), 1979's Dune, and 1995's double-album In Blue (which featured one long track called Return To The Tempel with electric guitar contributions from his friend Manuel Göttsching of Ash Ra Tempel). In 1976, he was drafted by Japanese percussionist and composer Stomu Yamashta to join his short-lived "supergroup" Go, also featuring Steve Winwood, Michael Shrieve, and Al Di Meola. They released two studio albums (Go in 1976 and Go Too in 1977) and one live album ("Live from Paris" recorded in 1976 and released in '77) which went on to become a cult favourite.Throughout the 1970s he followed closely in the footsteps of Tangerine Dream, albeit with far lighter sequencer lines and a more reflective, dreamy edge, not unlike the ambient music of his contemporary Brian Eno. It is to be noted that some of his lighter albums are appreciated by New Age music fans, despite the fact that Schulze has always denied connections to this genre.Klaus Schulze had a more organic sound than other electronic artists of the time. Often he would throw in decidedly non-electronic sounds such as acoustic guitar and a male operatic voice in Blackdance, or a cello in Dune and Trancefer. Schulze developed a Minimoog technique that sounds uncannily like an electric guitar, which is quite impressive in concert. Schulze often takes German events as a starting point for his compositions, a notable example being on his 1978 album "X" (the title signifying it was his tenth album), subtitled "Six Musical Biographies", a reference to such notables as Ludwig II of Bavaria, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Trakl, and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. His use of the pseudonym Richard Wahnfried is indicative of his interest in Richard Wagner, a clear influence on some albums like the aforementioned Timewind.
In the 1980s Schulze moved from analog to digital instruments, and his work accordingly became less experimental and more accessible. Although the switch to purely digital recording and instruments is evident in the style of Dig It (1980) It was not until the release of Trancefer (1981) that the shift in style became evident. Trancefer was far more obviously reliant on sequencers than previous recordings, and the resultant effect transformed Schulze's style from gentle melodic journeys to an ever-growing crescendo of music consisting of multi-layered rhythmical passages. This is particularly evident in the Trancefer's first track "A Few Minutes After Trancefer", although the second track "Silent Running" is more reminiscent of Schulze's earlier works.This newer style can also be found in Schulze's next release Audentity. Both "Cellistica" and "Spielglocken" are composed in a similar, sequencer based, style as Trancefer, but this is certainly not the case of all of Audentity's tracks, indeed "Sebastian in Traum" hints towards the Operatic style to be found in some of Schulze's much later work. The predominance of sequencing can also be found in the follow-up live album Dziękuję Poland Live '83, although it should be noted that many of its tracks are re-workings of those to be found on Audentity. Schulze's next studio-based album Angst (soundtrack to the namesake 1983 film) moved away from the harshness of sharp, heavily sequenced style of the 3 previous albums and, once again, had the more "organic feel" of earlier recordings.Another highlight of this era was En=Trance with the dreamy cut "FM Delight". The album Miditerranean Pads marked the beginning of very complex percussion arrangements that continued into the next two decades.In 1989, German band Alphaville released their album The Breathtaking Blue, on which Klaus Schulze was both a contributing musician (partially) and the album's producer.
Starting with Beyond Recall, the first half of the 1990s was the notorious "sample" period, when Schulze used a wide variety of pre-recorded sounds such as screeching birds and sensuous female moans in his studio albums and live performances. Sampling was such an unpopular diversion that when In Blue was released in 1995 without samples it was hailed as a return to form. The decade also saw the release of copious amounts of previously unreleased material, of varying quality, in several limited-edition boxed sets. Some live recordings were discovered on pristine but forgotten reels of tape which had been used to provide echo in concerts.
Recently Schulze began incorporating elements of jazz and classical music, working with more contemporary electronic dance music such as trance, and creating two operas, the second still awaiting release.[citation needed] Also, in 2005 he began re-releasing his classic solo and Wahnfried albums with bonus tracks of unreleased material recorded at roughly the same time as the original works. In the last several years, Schulze has produced albums and staged numerous live appearances with Lisa Gerrard.
With the release of his fortieth album (Big in Japan: Live in Tokyo 2010) in September 2010, Klaus Schulze entered his fifth decade as a solo musician. He's currently working on his next album, Shadowlands, to be released in 2011.
KLAUS SCHULZE on YouTube: