BigZabba says,
She obeys
She potties
She barely bites.
Looks like we’re starting to get a super puppy!
Author: DaddyZabba
Advertising that works
Most of you already know that 99% of our business has come from word-of-mouth…and we have nothing to complain about since our business has pretty much doubled each year for the last three years. However, from time to time we have dabbled with small newspapers, some print and even google adwords with basically no success.
That is until we found HARO. If you’ve never heard of it, help-a-reporter-out is the recent creation of Peter Shankman. It’s a simple email list that connects reporters to potential sources for articles, for free. We’ve been subscribed since there were only a couple of thousand readers, and now Peter’s got more than 35,000 readers and a ton of high profile reporters and bloggers use it to find sources. We’ve benefited by getting some quality press through connections we’ve made on HARO.
Peter offers one short text sponsorship at the top of each of his emails. We figured we’d give it a try since the price was reasonable and we’ve never had a chance to put AllyZabba in more than 35,000 people’s inbox. It turns out, it was the best advertising choice we’ve ever made.
Let’s get specific. We were having a decent month of December–especially considering the general state of the economy. Here’s an excerpt from the ad that Peter ran for us on December 16th:
I love HARO sponsors because they send me the coolest (warmest, and softest, technically,) things. This HARO is thanks to AllyZabba, the worlds softest blankie…order today for guaranteed Christmas delivery for only 1 cent!. http://www.AllyZabba.com/
And you can see the response from this graph showing our site visitors:
And here is what happened to our sales that day. This graph shows the approximate gross income:
Even with our niche product of high-end, handmade baby blankets, the results were terrific. It’s a little hard to tell from these charts how good the rest of our month actually was. We always have a couple hundred visitors in our store and at least a few orders each day. But, by comparison to “HARO day” the rest of the month looks like nothing. The graphs also don’t tell the whole story because a lot of the discussions we have been exchanging with people all over are from the HARO connection. We anticipate good things from these new relationships.
In short, advertising that works. You should subscribe to the HARO list and see what you think. What a great way to end the AllyZabba year.
blog.allyzabba.com is online!
The new look for the blog is up and running. Hope you like the new look!
Zoo Tycoon
BigZabba got a computer game for Christmas called Zoo Tycoon. We sat down to play it this afternoon right after snack time:
“I brought my pretzels, because watching animals poop can make me hungry.”
LittleZabba Cooks!
Can we play the game…
Every once in a while, a silly thing we’ll do with BigZabba once turns into one of her favorite games. An example–just about every time BigZabba finishes her entire plate at dinner we have a conversation like this:
BigZabba: Mommy, can you play the game where you ask me where my dinner is?
Mommy: Ok, let me see, where did your dinner go?
BigZabba: I ate it.
Mommy: I don’t think so young lady, did you hide it under your chair?
BigZabba: [laughing] Nope, I ate it.
Mommy: Than, what did you do with it? You must have fed it to the dog.
BigZabba: [laughing] No, we don’t even have a dog. I ate it all.
Mommy: [pretend anger] Now wait one second young lady, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble for lying when I find out what really happened to your dinner. Did you feed it to your sister?
LittleZabba: [laughing now too]
BigZabba: [laughing] No. I ate it…
This goes on for about 5 minutes before we’ll finally admit that she must have just eaten it and the congratulations commence.
She loves a similar game about picking which hamburger is hers when we eat at In-N-Out. DaddyZabba figures out some reason why each burger is hers (except for the one she ordered). Now, whenever we order burgers, we know we’ll hear, “Daddy, can we play the game where you pretend to give me everyone else’s hamburger…”
Extreme Double-Dipping
LittleZabba has perfected the art of double-dipping. Not only does each chip get dipped more than once, but in an effort to achieve the ultimate dip-to-chip ratio, she actually licks the dip off each chip until it’s gone.
The chip itself is only consumed after it’s so soggy from repeated licking that it no longer has the structural integrity to lift the next bite of dip into her mouth.
We don’t recommended trying to share your dip with LittleZabba.
On Whale Watching…
DaddyZabba: Would you like to go whale-watching tomorrow?
BigZabba: Daddy, it’s not up to us, it’s up to the whales if they want to come up and get watched or not.