Attention Small Business Owners & Authors!

It’s that time of the year again. Summer is slowly turning into fall, and fall will turn into winter, and with winter comes Christmas! Why am I thinking about Christmas so soon? Because I am getting ready for the second year of Singing Through the Rain‘s Small Business Christmas Gift Guide and I want you to be ready too!

Last year Singing Through the Rain had it’s first ever Small Business Christmas Shopping Guide and it was a big success! This year I wanted to get started a little early in contacting small businesses owners and authors because a lot of you start planning for Christmas very early.

Here is the link to last year’s guide: 2012 Small Business Christmas Shopping Guide. The guide is to help others find your products so they can easily buy Christmas gifts for family and friends. If you are interested in being listed, please see below for the guidelines:

• Cost: $5.00 (paypal only)
• Word limit: 50 words or less
• Link limit: up to 2
• Image size: 150×150
• Pinterest link (if interested – see below for details)
• Deadline: September 13, 2013

So here’s how it works: This would be a small ad on a blog post that would send people to your site(s) to buy your products for the Christmas season. Once you decide that you want to be on the list, you would send me email (singingthroughtherain@gmail.com) with the information above (your ad, links, and photos). Once the deadline hits I will use the next two weeks after that to send out the invoices to everyone. On October 1st, I will start getting the posts set up, and on November 1st and 2nd they will go live.

Your description would be something about your products and why you think they would make perfect gifts for Christmas! Please don’t include more than 2 links. These can be links to your site and Facebook page or wherever you want people to order your products from. The image should be no larger than 150×150 and can be a picture of a product or products, a logo, or anything else that you would like to represent your book or business!

I will be working to promote the post and your products to thousands of people. My blog averages over 42,000+ views per month and last month reached 80,000+ views. I will also be sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest and will be having others blog about it as well. If each person on the list also shares a link to it we will have even more views. If you know anyone else who may be interested in this, please feel free to share this blog post with them.

Also, please keep in mind that this is a first come first served basis. If 3 people who sell Mary Kay email me to be on the list, I can only take the first person. It wouldn’t make sense to have 3 different Mary Kay websites on there. So please email to reserve your spot, ASAP! Also, please no e-books unless it’s able to be used on kindle and no photographers (Because photographers are a local business it’s hard to drive traffic to their sites, unless it is local traffic.).

Pinterest
For those of you that choose to be on the list there will be a Pinterest Board just for you to be on to pin and post your small business items and books (please include your pinterest link in the email if interested). These items that are pinned will be viewed by my 6,000+ followers and will be another great way to get the word out about your book or business. I will add those who are interested to the board on October 1st. I will be checking to make sure that there is no more than 5 images per person per day. Here are the rules:

• This board is ONLY for images having to do with your shops, businesses, books etc that you are advertising on my blog. If you are not sure about an image or have any questions please let me know.

• Because this could possibly get out of hand I would like to limit it to no more than 5 images per person, per day. That means if you sell candles for example, there should be no more than 5 candle images per day and those images should have to do with your shop/business.

Hope this makes sense to everyone. Please feel free to email me with more questions should you have any. Thank you for your interest and for reading and good luck this Christmas season!