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Movie Profiles & Premiums
Supplement. September 15, 2005 Lots of changes have been and are being implemented. On second thought I've put off returning to the work world, deciding that at the age of 33 time is running out on my fantasy-land pursuits...in other words, if I'm meant to give my own business a better go then the time is now. Once I cash in my chips on this chances are that the opportunity won't present itself again until I'm of retirement age. So, here's the deal...I am still discontinuing the "Movie Collectibles for Sale" portion of things-and-other-stuff.com, at least as the main attraction that is. I'll offer some new movie items from time to time, but I can't afford to keep all of my eggs in that basket. PS: I am still running bulk lots of vintage movie collectibles in clearance auctions, all starting at $9.95 with no reserve. Many still photos to come! I had mentioned last time that I had bought a domain name (paperpubs.com) and was experimenting with eBay's ProStores....both of those ideas have been quashed. ProStores has potential, but for the seller like me, dealing with a great number of unique items, the shipping set-up is a nightmare. I cancelled my membership. From there I researched the net for yet more info about web hosting which provides the tools for an online store. I stumbled upon something called Site Build It! or SBI!. The site had a heavy sales pitch, but seemed to have a lot of people that believed in it. I downloaded a free 250-word e-book called the Site Build It! Action Guide and read it late one night. Again, a heavy sales pitch, but I liked what I was seeing in regards to the meat of their offering. Next I searched the net again and looked for some independent information regarding SBI!. I found it, thought it looked okay, took the plunge and signed up for the annual $300 fee. There's no turning back now...the new site is a reality: http://www.collecting-old-magazines.com By the way, that $300 annually isn't just for the web hosting, there are a ton of tools to help optimize your site for the search engines, and I must say that even with only 4 or 5 pages of the new site built I already feel like I've gotten my money's worth from the research materials provided. As a minor tribute to the
things-and-other-stuff.com site I've begun Collecting Old Magazines.com with
information about the movie magazines: Looking to keep myself busy for as many of the 24 hours in a day that I can manage to stay awake, I've also set up another site, which will admittedly take a back-seat to the magazine site for now, but I do have bigger plans for in the future: http://www.the-collectors-site.com That one is going to be a bit wider in scope. I'm hoping to build it into a hub for not only collectors of movie collectibles and vintage magazines, but all things collectible. But as for now I'm going to be spending more time at Collecting Old Magazines.com learning the SBI! methods and hopefully incorporating them into all three sites. The next change regards eBay: I'm keeping
things-and-other-stuff as my user ID on eBay, however I have already changed the
name of my eBay store to Collecting Old Magazines. If you had my store
bookmarked you will probably need to update your bookmark. Here's the new
address: (Note the new logo!). If you only collect movie memorabilia and are bored by all of this, I do apologize--however movie magazines are going to be a large part of Collecting Old Magazines.com and there will be many peripheral items such as LIFE, LOOK, TIME and other magazines with movie star covers...so hopefully I'll still keep you as a customer :) Another note on updating your bookmarks...and this does effect you movie aficionados--in order to improve both navigation and hopefully search engine rankings on the things-and-other-stuff.com site I have changed many (most?) of my URL's. I'm still in the process of updating most of the Photo ID Pages, but all of the profiles and most other web addresses have changed. So again, if you've bookmarked any pages at things-and-other-stuff.com you will more than likely need to update them (sorry about that!). I think in the end the changes will help this be a better site though. I also figured out how to customize my 404 and other Error Pages, so you won't get that plain and scary screen if you reach one of the old URL's. I'm pretty proud of myself for that, didn't think I'd be able to figure it out! Since the last issue I have added some movies to Cliff's DVD List, be sure to check that out if you liked it the first time around. I also still plan to add many more collectibles slide shows to the site. I have about 4 years worth of images stored away at Marketworks, I just to retrieve them, find the time, and make the pages. (And then I can cancel my Marketworks account and save $70/month!) Look for more Slide Shows in the future. I forgot to mention a couple of sites that really impressed me in the last issue and it really bugged me because I even wrote out notes to myself on Post-It's and stuck them on my monitor screen. Anyway, I can mention them now. If you clicked over to The Collectors Site.com you may have already seen my plug for them, but What A Collection.com deserves another mention. This site is so cool in that it perfectly combines collecting with the internet. What A Collection.com is a community where you can sign-up and show your collection off to the world. You get a profile page, some image space, and plenty of room to tell everyone what you collect. If anyone from this newsletter tries it out, let me know and I'll definitely give your page a link from things-and-other-stuff.com. I haven't looked at the details on joining, but I did see a banner on their home page advertising "Free Collectors Websites" so my guess is that it's free! I exchanged e-mails (and links) with Ron at What A Collection.com and it was very friendly correspondence. I definitely recommend that you check it out. Another site that I thought was pretty cool was the Wayback Machine which I bumped into when I was checking my numbers at Alexa.com. This site archives other sites, including things-and-other-stuff.com. I was pretty surprised at some of my early and ugly designs (I'm self-taught, so they're pretty bad!). If you're interested have a look, the link brings you right to my site's history beginning in September 2002. Last and certainly not least, the day after I sent the last issue of The Movie Profiles and Premiums Newsletter, Carly Svamvour did indeed get in touch with me and send a Crossword for us! Since I'm not sure when my next mailing will be I'm going to present here both the puzzle and solution to "Into the Fall":
Into the Fall, A Crossword Puzzle As always feel free to e-mail any thoughts or ideas to us
at
things@things-and-other-stuff.com, we're always willing to listen.
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