The weather is finally heating up around here. I can't say the same for the store sales. Because of that, and because it's been a few weeks I'm starting to think about another newsletter. I'll get one out in the next week or so. Haven't been doing much with the store in the last week or so. I wonder if that's why I haven't had many sales or because we're getting into summer full swing.

I've also started sending out coupon codes in the form of a flyer and attached business cards to everyone on my mailing list. Hopefully that will bring in repeat business and hopefully people will refer friends.

I've started to try entering more comments in blogs to see if I can get a higher ranking with my blog through google. I've actually found a few very interesting blogs in the process.

Speaking of search engines... Microsoft has come out with a new search engine called Bing.com so I've submitted my site there. We'll see if that increases my traffic. After a week or two of submission I don't see many people coming from there at all. As far as visibility of Bing.com... I've seen commercials for it. I had to be told by someone what it was though. Not really a good sign when you don't know what something is after seeing a commercial AND visiting the website. I haven't defaulted to using bing.com for myself but Bill Gates does know how to market and produce a great product so who knows where bing.com will be in 6 months.

This blog post brought to you by

First newsletter was a success!

I included a 15% off coupon and someone purchased a dog pool. These have become very popular in the store. Of the 28 emails I sent I'm including the responses below. I don't think they are too bad. I like that nobody opted out.

• 28 Sent
• 12 Views
• 16 Untraced
• 8 Clicked
• 0 Forwarded
• 0 Bounced
• 0 Unsubscribed

On another note, I have begun to have an average of 1.5 sales per day. I'm very excited about that. The dog pool has been extremely popular. It is a terrific price with terrific quality so where could a person go wrong?

I've begun printing my snail mail flyer to send out to customers. With the flyer I am including a coupon code for 10% off anything in the store for them and if they refer a friend them and the friend will receive 10% off. I'm just waiting for stamps from USPS and I'll mail them out. I'm hoping for some good word of mouth advertising.