So I’ve Got This Paypal Button on my Blog

September 11, 2013 By Jodi

January – Teach – Tails of Teach

You remember Teach? He’s Mr. January in the 2014 Dogs of Blogville Calendar. You can look at Teach every single day next January when you purchase the Dogs of Blogville Calendar.

Let’s cut right to the chase, you know technology challenges me. Last year I did the calendars as a combination of e-mails and paypal and a spreadsheet. This year since we had so many more entries, I anticipate a larger demand for calendars so I looked for an easier way to manage sales.

Last week I threw the plea out on Facebook and Kari sent me a link to a plug in. Sweet, I downloaded it but that was where I bottomed out.

I curse you plug ins! And you too widgets!

Enter Jodi Chick. Dude this Chick is amazing. (he he, pun intended) I mean with a cool name like Chick and being a female, how could you NOT have fun with it? Well, she literally took over my computer remotely and told me step-by-step what I needed to do. When I had finished and installed a Paypal button on my blog, she said “You did it!”

Um….no Jodi. YOU did it. If it wasn’t for her, I’d still be sitting on Paypal trying to figure out what category my blog fit into.

So I’ve got this Paypal button on my blog.

Because I anticipate selling more calendars than we sold last year, I opened a business account with Paypal. This was to make sure Paypal didn’t get snarky and shut me off at a certain amount of sales. The trouble is the business account charges, and I want to make sure we get as much as we can for Benny, so the calendars are $21.00 each. BUT that includes shipping and tax and everything else.

Like I mentioned in a previous post, if you can consolidate orders, we will realize a bigger profit which means more money for Benny.

I placed the Paypal button in the upper right side of the blog just under the subscriptions link. You can use either your Paypal account or a major credit card, if that’s easier. If for some reason Paypal or credit card doesn’t work for you, e-mail me at stone.jodi@ymail.com and we’ll figure something out.

Since I’m not sure how Paypal notifies me I’ll somehow be verifying with people who place orders that their orders are correct. If Paypal includes an e-mail that would be great, if not I will try and contact you via your blog and if that doesn’t work, I’ll run a post on the first Saturday in October listing all the people who ordered. I will also order a few extra calendars just in case.

I’m probably making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be, but I’m pretty sure some people wanted calendars last year that didn’t get them. 🙁

I’m going to accept orders from now through the end of September, which still gives us plenty of time to order the calendars and still be able to get them out before the holidays.

Ready or not, here we go!

Here They Are

September 2, 2013 By Jodi

I want to thank you all, for your hard work at promoting the calendar contest. All told we had 3,202 voters! That to me is totally amazing.

Not surprising to any of you who voted, the top spot was quite a competition. Right from the start Ryder came out hard and fast, but Teach quickly caught up. Unfortunately there can only be one cover spot and that spot belongs to Ryder from All Things Collie.

The rules this year stated the dog with the most votes could choose which month they’d like to be featured in, and Ryder has chosen the month of July. Which means the calendar will shake out like this:

: January – Teach – Tails of Teach

: February – Wrigs – Life with Wrigs: hike, play, eat, nap!

: March – Reilly and Denny – The Cowspotdogs

: April – Susie “Sweet Petunia” – The Mad Scots

: May – Sampson and Delilah – Heart Like a Dog

: June – Rita – Pooch Smooches

: July – Ryder – All Things Collie

: August – Norman – Sand Spring Chesapeakes

: September – Bella – I Still Want More Puppies

: October – Desmond – Life With Desmond

: November – Bunny – Tales and Tails

: December – Benny and Lily – Two French Bulldogs

There you have it, the twelve dogs who will be featured in the 2014 Dogs of Blogville Calendar. The good news is that while these twelve dogs are being featured, all of the dogs will be included in the calendar!

I know you’re all dying to know the details of ordering, but I haven’t quite gotten that figured out yet. Last year it was a combination of paypal and e-mail and required me keeping a spreadsheet and matching e-mails to paypal to spreadsheet, well you get the point. I’m currently looking for a plug in that will allow me to gather all the information right here on the blog to make it a tad bit easier.

Last year the calendars sold for $20 with just about $10 of it going to our blog friends at Champion of My Heart. I anticipate the price will be the same as last year but was hoping I could get folks to help out by consolidating orders.

Example, you have five co-workers who want calendars. You collect their money and place one order for six calendars. I send you six calendars which saves about $25 in shipping, which in turn will go into our fund for our friend Benny. Then you in turn distribute the calendars to your co-workers. It will also help me in my record keeping.

What you can do now is start asking around to all your friends who voted and ask them if they will be ordering calendars. Get a good idea of many people want them.

In the meantime, I will work on a system for ordering and Julie will start working on the calendar. By this time next week I hope to have everything in place so we can start taking orders.

Again thank you all for the hard work you did in promoting your blog and pictures, let’s make this next phase of our fundraiser just as successful!

It’s Here!!

August 25, 2013 By Jodi

It’s time! It’s time!! The 2nd Annual Dogs of Blogville Contest has now begun.

First I’d like to say a really BIG thank you to Julie from the Daily Dog Blog, she’s worked so hard resizing all the photos so they would work nice on the blog. She will also be the one who handles all the technical details of the design and upload of the calendar. She is truly one amazing lady and a really good friend. Make sure you stop by and say hi.

So this is it. We’ve crossed our ~~i’s and dotted our t’s~~ t’s and dotted our i’s. We’ve been as thorough as we can be and we’ve learned a few things along the way and I’m sure we’ll learn a few more things in the next week. In fact, I think I’m going to make a page specifically for this contest. Hopefully next year will run much smoother for us. 😀

This is the voting portion of the Dogs of Blogville Calendar contest. It’s all about YOU and how YOU promote your dogs/blog.

Here’s how it works. You tweet, facebook, blog whatever you want but direct people to come and vote for your photo. The photo with the most votes will be on the cover AND will get their choice of which month they’d like to be featured in. I have to forewarn you, last year’s winner All Things Collie really brings their A game, this lady is hardcore. 🙂

The next eleven photos with the top votes will be featured in order (minus whatever month the winner chooses.)

All participating dogs will be featured in the calendar on the back page(s).

After the voting process is complete, we will give you information about ordering.

It’s not so much a popularity contest as much as it is you getting the word out and having people come and vote.

I’ve tried to organize everything alphabetically but I’m human and I can make mistakes, if you see one please let me know and I’ll do my best to fix it.

One more quick note before I turn you loose to look at photos. You will notice that there are two blogs in the list that don’t have photos. I’ve contacted both blogs and am giving them another day to get their photos in, if I don’t have have their photos by Monday, I will sadly have no other choice but to remove them from the competition.

About the voting process. Voting opens today at 12:00 noon Eastern Standard time (NYC) it is limited to one IP ADDRESS per 24 hour period. For those of you with multi-computer households it is important to remember that any smart phone, tablet, computer that shares a network also shares an IP address. If you vote on your computer then try and vote on your phone, chances are it won’t work, unless you disconnect from your network. If someone tells you they tried to vote and they can’t, then that is probably the issue.

Voting ends next Sunday, September 1, 2013 at noon.

The voting tool is AFTER the photos, all you do MOM is scroll down to the little circle next to Sampson and Delilah’s name and click it. The move down to the button that says VOTE and click that. Easy Peasy!!

Here is the list of participating dogs along with their blogs.

Alma and Moses from Back Alley Soapbox

Bella from I Still Want More Puppies

Bella from Bringing Up Bella

Benny and Lily from Two French Bulldogs

Blueberry from Spotty, Spotty, Polkadotty

Bunny from Tales and Tails

Cupcake from No Dog About It

Desmond from Life With Desmond

Dougall and Alex from The Dougall Diaries

Emma from My GBGV Life

Frankie and Ernie from FRANKly and ERNESTly Speaking