Monday, August 10, 2009

Congratulations to all the winners of our Mega Giveaway!


Thank you so much for your support.   There is still one prize left to giveaway!! We haven’t reached our 200th fan on Facebook yet.  Once we hit that mark we will randomly pic a fan to win two 1/8oz of perfume body oils!
There are also couple of prizes that have gone unclaimed. Take a look at your spam folders if you entered one of the giveaways during that time.


Wednesday, July 22, 2009

MEGA Candle and Perfume Body Oil Giveaway!!! 10 WINNERS!!!

***Subscribe, follow, be my Fan, Post or Buy to WIN!! ***


Fall is only weeks away and I'm downsizing my line of products and scents. Since I'm a scent addict that probably only means I'm making room for more scents (650 and counting)!!

Newly on Etsy, Twitter this month and Facebook a few months, I am giving 10 prizes away!!


That's 10 chances to win once I hit these milestones:
  • 100 Facebook fans - Once we hit 100 fans I will pick a fan to win a variety of 5 votive candles. (refer our fan page to your friends!)
  • 100 Twitter followers - Follow me on Twitter. Once I hit 100 follower I will pick a follower to win a variety of 5 votive candles
  • Subscribe to my Blog by 7/25/09 - Once I will randomly choose 1 subscriber to win a natural wax oval candle (unscented) similar to this. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=28014025
  • 200 Facebook fans - I will pick a fan to win 2- 1/8oz Perfume body oils (SE) - you choose the scent
  • 200 Twitter followers - I will randomly choose a follower to win 2 – 1/8oz Perfume body oils (SE) - you choose the scent.
  • Subscribe to my Blog by 7/31/09 - I will randomly choose 1 subscriber to win a 2- 1/8oz Perfume body oils (SE) - you choose the scent.
  • 10th Etsy sale wins a 8oz Candle Tin - you choose the scent!
Our Etsy Store: nikkicandles.etsy.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/nikkicandles

Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/pages/NikkiMakesScents/67722007682

4 more ways to win!

GO TO: this Etsy forum

Please note: If you win you are not eligible to win again
Hope to see you around!

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Handmade Heaven


If you read some of my blog you know I am an advocate for handcrafted items. Not only because I am a crafter myself as well as my mom, but I love to give. I like my gifts to have thought and meaning and I think that’s only possible by finding something uniquely for them. Of course that is not always possible but whenever I can I will.
So I’ve been lurking at this site for over year and decided this summer to read through it and yes….I’m addicted. I think I use that word too much.
Etsy.com is a place to buy and sell handmade items and I definitely bought more than I sold. It is absolutely fantastic to find almost any custom piece of jewelry, knitted, or baked item you can think of. The absolute best part of it is you can go the Alchemy section and request whatever you can think of, suggest a price and sellers will bid on the opportunity to make it for you. This gives you the opportunity to check out several shops and at a cost you think is reasonable. I found so many favorite shops and I intend to share them with you throughout the months on this blog. Some of course will be related to the site but many more are just shops I adore and had to share. When your finish buying from my shop give etsy a look-see!


Monday, May 25, 2009

Spam Attack!!!

I hate the canned meat and the junk email called spam!! I don't know to many who like either but I lately I would have much rather had the canned pork each day for lunch the past month and a half than attacking my store and rendering my business lifeless. This past month (beginning April 4th to be exact) SPAM has run rampant through my business emails. Not until a couple of weeks ago did we realize despite the hundreds of junk emails we were deleting each day there where still thousands still lurking in the que preventing REAL emails to come in. We have about 15 different business email addresses based on service and five major ones were attacked with an average of 1000 spams a day. Half were still bypassing filters and the other half were overloading spam folders. In other words, it's been a nightmare. We are changing our email addresses and placing a captcha contact form to help alleviate the invasion so we may be able to conduct business more timely. For those customers, reps, affiliates and inquires who have been affected by us not returning emails I sincerly apologize. Hopefully we have emailed everyone back with an explaination about our delayed reponse. If we haven't answered your email or processed your order within a week the email may have been deleted in error. Please resend your email. With this expensive and long lesson we have some tips from our webhost and things we learned along the way to help you prevent an attack on your email:
  1. Use a Black & White List: This is something I have been trying to avoid for a while now because as a business sometimes even my reponse emails are sent to customer's spam. It's frustrating because I want them to know I responded but when the reponse comes back undeliverable.
  2. Have at least 2 email addresses. Have a strictly personal email address for friends and use the black & white list. Use the other email address for other things and always add the email address to your safe list for people you are requesting a response from.
  3. Greylisting: A temporary email rejection. This is something we are considering for our personal email addresses. Here is a little more info on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylisting).
  4. Make your email adress as weird as possible. It is less likely you will be picked up by a Spam list. For example Sam123@hotmail.com is more likely to be targeted than 123Sam44@hotmail.com.
  5. If you have a business, blog or are part of a social network do not publish your email or have link to your address. This will prevent computer generated emails if your email address is published as Sam(at)hotmail(dot)com than Sam@hotmail.com. Make sure businesses state they will not share your email address or publish it if it is a social network.
  6. Report it or Unsubscribe. This can be a pain but it will be helpful. Report constant emails from overtly porographic websites immediately. For sites you visited or purchased from you may have been added to their mail list automatically. I would just unsubscribe. If you still receive emails after unsubscribing I would then report as spam.
We would love to hear if you have any additional tips to battle Spam.