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Sunday, March 1, 2009

March Selling Lounge Newsletter

March 2009 Newsletter

Best Site Contest
Going On For April



Stop by and vote for your favorite site! Click on the Trophy above.

VintageRoseCollectibles
YellowSand1964
Sportscards 4 All
Livvies Corner
kelekas Kollections
Red Rose Boutique
Twice Around Books
Candle Tart
AdvertiseYourAuctionsFree
Sew Sew On Alsoshop



Best Site Contest

Vote Here For Your Best Site!

I want to thank everyone for participating in our first monthy The Best Site Contest, I think we all had fun checking out the sites and what products they have.

This is going to be something that I want to do monthly because it not only gets traffic to your sites, but it gets people looking at your products and possibly sales to your site. Not to mention that the winner gets his or her banner places on the front of The Selling Lounge for a full month being seen by spiders, bots and visitors.

Thanks Again!

Stop by and vote for The Best Site Contest Going On Now:
CLICK HERE

Stop by and sign up for The Best Site Contest here:
CLICK HERE




Thank You For The Articles

I want to thank Organically Yours, Diana for doing the article on Squidoo and the Article By Sheila - CruiseReady on PASSWORD SECURITY! These are both very important articles and I wish that you would take the time and read over them.



Bonanzle


Recent Changes at Bonanzle

















Please stop by The Welcome Thread and make all of our new members fill right at home here, I'm sure they would appreciate it.
























The Selling Lounge Best Site Contest!

The Selling Lounge
This last month we had our first Best Site Contest!
And The Winner Is CRUISE READY STORE!

CRUISE READY STORE
Cruise Ready Store is a specialty store carrying a selection of items of interest to the cruising community. If you’re looking for Cruise Accessories or Memorabilia, Cruise Ready is ready for you!

Established: March 26, 2008, to share a love of cruising with likeminded souls, and help others to always be Cruise Ready.

Owner: A cranky old lady who is fortunate to live within minutes of a sea port. She and her oh-so patient husband have taken around 30 cruises, and are always ready for their next one. She is also a Steward (moderator) on one of the net’s most popular cruise forums, Cruiselinefans.com. A successful business owner for 14 years, Cruise Ready Store is her latest entrepreneurial venture.

Location: www.CruiseReadyStore.com

Cruise Gear
We have things you just might find indispensible for on your next cruise, from Cruise Shirts and swim cover-ups for day to evening accessories for formal night, like evening bags, formal snoods, nautical cuff links and tie bars, and more.

Take some of our Ginger candies along just in case of rough seas, and we have lanyards with holders for your ship ID card.

Bon Voyage Gifts
While just about any one of our items would make a great gift for an avid cruiser, we do have a small selection of especially made up Bon Voyage Cruise Gift packs … complete with Bon Voyage gift tags.

Cruise Mementos
We have a very nice, and nicely growing, collection of cruise mementos for you to choose from. You’ll find items from Carnival and Princess, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity, Cunard, Holland America, Norwegian, and other lines. Come and browse any time… you’re sure to see something that will bring back memories.

See what’s new at Cruise Ready today… you might find a perfect tote bag, or that travel alarm clock you’ve been meaning to get – or maybe a memento to cherish from a ship you’ve cruised or one you wish you could have.

And, speaking of new . . . if you’re new to cruising, be sure to check out our Tips for New Cruisers, and Cruising Links pages.



As a special Thank You, I have a Cruise Ready Store coupon code for 10% off any March purchase (no minimum purchase required) that is for members of the Selling Lounge. Just PM me here on TSL, or use the Contact form on my site, and tell me your Selling Lounge username when asking for the code, and I'll send it to you.

Sheila




What is so great about Squidoo?
Article By OrganicGiftsByDiana

I'm glad you asked! Squidoo is a combination of a website - a blog - a newsletter - and a photo album...

1.) Creating a lens is very easy.

2.) It is 100% FREE

3.) It is another way to link to your online store which gives you more credit as far as the web spiders are concerned - speaking of those little crawlers - they LOVE Squidoo and visit often so if you want your store noticed, link to it on a Squidoo lens.

4.) Need a place for your customers to be able to leave comments about your store? Or, do you want to get opinions about what is the hottest new color? Or, do you want to ask "Would you wear this?" (The applications for your business are endless and doing these things separate from your store will keep your store looking more professional.) Then make a lens for things like those too like I did - Here's mine so you can see what I mean : Click Here To Check Out Mine

5.) Are you looking for new customers and just hoping that they will find you? Again, Squidoo to the rescue! There are many of us who can tell you that we have had customers find us through one of our Squidoo lenses.

Remember how I told you that the search engine web-crawlers LOVE Squidoo? Well this really helps when a customer is looking for something that you have AND you have it on your lens. Ta Da - an email appears in your mailbox with a question from a potential customer or sometimes you will just get more orders out of the blue (out of the Squidoo blue that is - LOL)

6.) AND, you can have all of us who have Squidoo lenses join together to support each other by visiting each others lenses and rating and commenting... on them which makes them more popular and then the web-spiders will love them even more and then you can get even more customers and then... - Oh, well, you get the idea

7.) And last, you have me who will keep posting hints and tips in the Squidoo forum to help you.

Are you convinced yet?

There are many more reasons to use Squidoo as a business aid, but I think I have covered enough already.

Organically Yours,
Diana



PASSWORD SECURITY
Article By Sheila - CruiseReady

How smart would it be to leave a key that fit the lock on your house, car, and safety deposit box lying around in public where anyone could grab it? Or your checkbook? Or your credit cars? That’s similar to what you may be doing with your all your on-line accounts if you are using a weak password .

What is a weak password? An easily remembered password is usually also easily hacked. Hack programs can speed through one attempt after another at guessing your password. Here are some rules of thumb for passwords that are less likely to be compromised.

WARNINGS and WHAT TO AVOID
Never, ever use identifying information for a password. Examples: Your name, social security number, phone number, birth date, names of family members or pets. All of this information is publically available, and the first things a hacker will try if they are working manually.

Avoid repetitive or sequential characters. Examples: 11111 or abcdef. It will take a ‘hack’ program only a matter of minutes (or seconds) to hit on these.

Avoid words chosen from the dictionary. Examples: rainbow or mechanic. Hack programs can run through the entire dictionary of the English language in pretty short order.

Never use the same password everywhere you log in. If someone guesses your ONE password, you’ve just handed them the keys to your kingdom!

Never log on to a password protected account from ANY public computer, anywhere, anytime, EVER! You don’t know who may have installed a keystroke recorder program on that computer.

Please don’t write passwords on a note stuck to the underside of your keyboard! How obvious is that??? And, of course, never divulge passwords to anyone.

PASSWORD SECURITY TIPS
Passwords should be AT LEAST eight characters long. Longer is better. The shorter your password, the more often you should CHANGE it. Don’t keep the same one forever.

Use a mix of upper case letters + lower case letters + numerals + special characters (like $ # ! * , etc.) Password Example: q3W*7!3xpL (This might actually mean something to me, but not anyone else.)

Think about security when writing a password down. You could divide it in half, and put the first half in an excel spreadsheet, then write the second half in the back of your manual address book, for example.

REMEMBER: Your passwords are as important as what they protect, and what they protect is only as safe as your passwords. IT'S UP TO YOU!

CruiseReady,
Sheila





Antique Trading Post

What, another Auction site...? Well, somewhat.

As a Baby Boomer and getting closer to retirement every day, I look at all the Stuff around me and ask.."What am I going to do with it?" My kids have a few favorite pieces they want, but it doesn't make much of a dent in the over all scheme of things.

So, I thought, I will put it on Ebay!

Looking at all the fee's, and all the changes taking place there, I think, NO WAY!! So, I will open my own site. Surely there are more Baby Boomers like me out there, wanting to find new homes for items we have collected over the years. And maybe not in a big hurry to sell at the lowest price. ( With the change in the economy, that last thought may have changed for some.)

So, Antique Tranding Post was born.

My idea is have small stores with Buy Out prices. Then, because in the past, I have loved going to auctions about once a month, I thought "Why not run 7 day auctions once a month." This way the store owners could put up items they weren't really sure the worth of. "Let it go to Auction!"

The site has been open since the 1st of February, and growing slowly. We are not quite ready to hold our first auction yet, for I feel we need a bit more growth, but am looking forward to it in the near future.

Lady Belle
Antique Trading Post



Over Night Auctions

Overnight Auctions is really growing and expanding. We have had several new members in the last month join us on our Auction sites, and over 50 join our Community Forum . We are determined to see ONA grow and succeed, and we could not do that without our members. So, at this time, I'd like to extend a big THANK YOU to each and every member at Overnight Auctions.

Currently, we are running a Listing Contest, with the Grand Prize being a $20 gift from Mike (djind) to the member listing the most items. This Contest will end March 4, 2009, and will be followed by another Contest that is yet to be determined. We have around eleven members participating in the Listing Contest, and so far over 100 new listings have been added to our sites! Wow!

We are also holding a Raffle to help with Overnight Auctions Advertising. You can see the details here. for the first one. We have two more items to raffle off in the next month, so keep an eye on this forum, you don't want to miss out on these great prizes up for grabs!

There is lots more going on at ONA, stop by sometime and chat awhile! We have a Live Chat Room on our Forum too, and it's a blast to use, handy at most times, and saves space on the Boards, less posts, more chats!

March 4-11, we will be surfing Surf4Bargains as a Team. It was so much fun when we did it for ReallySmartDeals, we want to try again at S4B! We need more members to join us for this, so if you haven't been over in a while, this is a great opportunity!

Come visit us! OverNightAuctions.net", OverNightAuctions.com, OverNightVoice.com You'll be glad you did!

Crys (CraftsDucksNMore2) Owner ONA





Bonanzle

Pledge Listing Kickoff
AntiquesRGreat

Hello my name is Gladys Ramos……. I have a booth at Bonanzle …. That's called….Remnants of Yesterday my user name is AntiquesRGreat. This website rocks and I know that it deserves to be ranked the same or even higher than our leading competitors like ecrater and ebay.

This gave me an idea, I posted a thread promising a pledge of 30 listings, hoping that others would pledge the same, or even higher. I was so excited when the pledges starting coming in for 30, 50, even 1000 listings! One simple thread has kicked off a never ending stream of hard working sellers who are helping to guide Bonanzle to the top. It's a fun challenge that will result in a higher rank for this site. Submit a listings pledge of as many listings you think that you can do, don't worry you have a week to complete your promise. It's that simple! This is the kind of motivation that I wanted to give everyone.

Together we can make Bonanzle into the highest selling website online!

The Selling Lounge has a thread here.

Bonanzle has a thread here.





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