Guest Blog: Peggy Mundell – Photographing Pets
Today we have Peggy Mundell from DogBreedz, and she’s sharing with us some of her super tips for photographing pets (she’s a pro). Pay attention, folks – this is a guest blog chock full of sound advice!
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Photographing Pets for Greeting Cards
In last week’s Design Spotlight, Ernestine Grindal showed us that a snapshot of our dear pet can be turned into a fantastic greeting card that many can enjoy. And yet, when you submit your favorite fur-kid home photo, the Reviewers kick it back to you for edits. Or worse, they deny your card all together – what gives? My goal today is to give you hints to overcome some common problems when photographing pets and tips on how to make more of those photos usable in your GCU cards.
First things first – keep your camera within reach! How many times have you seen that oh-so-adorable sleeping puppy shot, but when you even think about getting up to find your camera, the moment is gone and your pup is at your feet, ready for the next adventure of the day? Having your camera always less than an arm-length away means you will have more opportunities to capture those “awwww!” moments.
Point of view can make a ho-hum photo into one that pops and gets the shoppers’ attention. Instead of standing to take the photo, get down on your pet’s level. Lay on the ground, or if your pet is in a chair then kneel down before you focus and click. A different perspective is often what capture’s a viewer’s attention.
Is red-eye an issue for you? The ol’ devil eye is caused by light reflecting off the retina in the back of the pet’s eye – the red is because of the blood vessels back there. Either shoot in a well-lit area so the pupils are not dialated (and therefore letting less light into the eye) or if your camera has a “double flash” feature, make use of it. The first flash will constrict the pupils and the second flash will light the scene for the photo. No double flash feature? If you can cover the flash with cheesecloth, it will allow the light to come thru while diffusing it just enough to reduce the red eye. Even better, if you can move the flash off the camera at all, having it on a different plane or angle from the camera lens will do the trick too. Of course there is always post-processing programs to help correct red-eye, if you have access to one.
Now you are jumping with joy – you know that your last photo HAS to be the photo-of-the-year, without a doubt! Your cutie-patootie pet just jumped up to bat at a butterfly and your camera was ready! But wait … when you look at it, all you see is a blurry tip of a tail – how the heck did THAT happen?! Many common point-n-shoot cameras have a slight delay – even tho you pushed the shutter at the precise moment Fido hit the top of his high-jump, the delay had you missing the shot. If your camera is one of those – be ready to take the photo a second before the height of the action. Or, turn your attentions to the more sedate, yet just as adorable shots.
Work on training in everyday life. Teach your pooch to sit on command before the food bowl hits the ground at dinner time and you can use that handy sit command when setting up a “spontaneous” shot. You have your dog now in a perfect sit, but his attention is elsewhere once the camera is raised? Hold the camera with one hand, and in the other hand have his favorite toy, a ball ready to throw, or a super yummy to-die-for treat – as you bring that hand in closer to the lens of the camera, you’ll have a dog that is posing like the true ham that he is when you take the shot. The next time your Rover guts a squeaky toy, don’t throw the squeaker out with the stuffing. When you are out at the park or exploring the back yard, focus on your pet and give a couple of quick squeaks – the head will come up and snap to attention in your direction for a perfect photo! Does Fluffy have a favorite spot where she likes to hang out? Hang a solid color sheet behind to cut down on the clutter that will show in your final photo – and have an instant home studio!
These are just a few tricks that I use in my professional photo shoots. I hope they come in handy while you take your own photos. Let’s see those animals on your greeting cards! If you have any questions, please leave a comment – I’ll be happy to help if I can.
Here are three examples of my greeting cards:
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Corrie: And here are some examples of poor pet pictures, provided by Greeting Card Universe. Yes, one of the reasons we’re forced to wait so long to get card approvals is the submission of cards with snapshots like these on them. Please remember, if you want to sell cards, they must have commercial appeal. Meaning, they have to be something someone else will actually pay for. Peggy’s cards are great and her advice is priceless.
Take our advice: if you’re hankering to put your pooch (or your kitty) on a card, use her tips to ensure a good result that not only doesn’t waste the reviewers precious time (and that of your fellow artists, too) but might put a little money in your pocket when a shopper buys it.
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Guest Blog, Tom Rent: Facebook Ads, Part 2
As promised, Tom Rent at Comical Captions has given us Part 2 of the Facebook Ads video – this time, he talks about his results, which are very interesting. You know, if a group of us advertised on FB, we could raise not only our own profiles, but GCU as well, which could only help sales… if there’s any interest, I’ll do an article on writing effective advertising copy.
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Community Shout Out – Contest Reminder!
Our CONTEST ends tomorrow, May 8th. If you haven’t already, enter today by dropping me a note. Artists eligible to enter the contest are those who have made a new blog post or Squidoo lens containing at least 3 links to GCU cards within the last 2 weeks. You can read all about it in our Newsletter.
So far, the following artists have been entered into the drawing: Monica, Janet, Tora, Judy, Bright, Sher, Mary Ann, Peggy, Cindy, Carole, Christine, Shelley, Naquaiya and Doreen.
Edited to add: Betsy and Denise.
Edit II to add: SunAtNight, Jannina and Pattiann.
You have until tomorrow, May 8, to get your entry in. The winner will be announced May 9th. A new CONTEST will begin May 10th. Stay tuned for details!
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Peggy at DogBreedz has a new blog post where you can – in addition to drooling over some gorgeous pet photos – learn about the Community Art thread ongoing in the GCU Forum. If you haven’t checked it out already, you should – this is a fun concept! Peggy’s blog post is an excellent example of how to integrate links to GCU greeting cards into your original content. Go and learn, young padawans.
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This Week’s Design of the Day Winners:
Oma Ramkhelawan 5-4-2011
Annielim 5-5-2011
Gerda Steiner 5-6-2011
Doreen Erhardt 5-7-2011
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Artist Interview: Tanya @ Moonlake Designs
Today we interview Greeting Card Universe artist, Tanya, aka Moonie, who joined GCU in 2008.
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Moonie, what drew you to join GCU?
So many designs and not a clue what to do with them, so I goggled greeting cards, and up popped GCU, so here I am.
Please tell us who you are, where you are, and what you do.
Not sure who I am exactly, I guess that changes like the weather. I am retired so I do my thing at home every day, too much of the day. The rest is walking and taking photos with the hubby at our local nature reserves.
I live in Northumberland, a small town called Blyth right near the harbour. I’m happy. I am Welsh but left there 12 years ago to be with the hubby, who is a paramedic by trade. I am 46 going on 16 most of the time, until the morning and it takes a while for my face to wake up.
What’s your favorite greeting card on GCU that you’ve created?
Oh heck, now that is a hard one! Well, as it was one of my first and one of my regular sales, and basically started me off on 3D art, it has to be this one. She sells a lot so she deserves to be my favorite.
Birthday for Granddaughter by Moonlake Designs
Where else can we find you?
You can find me on
Facebook (personal)
Facebook (Moonlake Designs)
Twitter
Squidoo (where my Zazzle designs are live updated)
Blogspot
What would people be surprised to learn about you?
I am painfully shy. I can’t even promote my cards offline. I hand make mohair teddy bears that have sold around the world since 1999 (in the process of restarting Avalon Bears). I play too many MMO’S (massively multiplayer on-line games) and have just lost 7 stone in weight.
How did you become an artist?
I was living in a small village in Wales, remote, depressed when I passed a telephone box. I don’t know why I went in but there on the shelf was a leaflet saying Free Computer Course – anyone welcome. I don’t know again why I went but I did, and a week later I had passed my first GNVQ 1 with distinctions in Computer Literacy. The rest is where I am now it was a long road but well worth the walk. Photography… well, that is a more recent thing. Drawing is a very long story and would bore you. I do love to draw when I can, but I suffer with so much self doubt with hand done things, most end up in the bin.
What or who inspires you? And what motivates you to create greeting cards from your photographs?
Everything inspires me from the sea to a colour I see on a particular day, Goths (yes, I did say Goths), my husband and other artists, although that can be a depressing route if you start yearning to be as good. I just take outside and bring it back and design.
I think it’s more of an obsession to design that comes first. The second – oh wow, people like them! But it feels so so good that one person likes a card enough to actually purchase it, that keeps me going and trying to make people happy with the designs I do. Even after this length of time and 9 thousand card sales in total (6,765 from GCU), I get so excited when that mail comes in saying Card Purchased. It really makes me so happy, and I always hope the recipient really enjoys my designs no matter how odd they may be.
Where do you find ideas for your work?
I start with an image and play with it for a while, then it either ends up scrapped or I start to see it emerging. Recently I struggled with a rabbit in a tea cup, eventually things started to come together. I have always worked like this. Holidays really govern what and when I do things. I do what I do for my own pleasure usually and if I like it at the time, it ends up as a card, if not it is binned or kept one side until I work on it again. I always hope if I thought – oh yes that is the one! – that other people will find the same. It does not always work like that, of course, but well… it’s so enjoyable and I just love doing it all the time.
What tools do you use to create your work?
Wacom, Lightroom, Poser, Vue, Photoshop, Illustrator, Sony A700, Art materials of all kinds, scanner. Can’t live without any of them.
Why did you start selling your designs as greeting cards?
So many designs and not a clue what to do with them, so I goggled “greeting cards” and up popped GCU, and I thought that people might enjoy my art but at a more affordable price, rather than huge prints and posters. Pricing is also why I make a lot of postcards of my large productions so that anyone can enjoy. This seems to do well for me.
What do you do to promote your greeting cards on GCU?
Not a lot of promotion is done. I find it rather awkward. I really should do it but even with blogs and things, I find I am left not quite knowing how to do that, and just hope people find me. I can’t promote outside of the house. Now and then I will submit to search engines (never sure this works). Also I really don’t like being pushy, so apart from Facebook and Twitter, I can’t force people to check out my designs plus most of my friends on Facebook are graphic designers and artists from Wales. They would not be impressed, I think. 🙂
Is there a tip about GCU or promoting your GCU designs you’d like to share with other artists?
Promotion – no, although you should at least every few months do a free online search engine submission, I think.
Name three other GCU artists whose work inspires you or that you admire.
Corrie Kuipers: Why? Because I just love those animals – bright, colourful, cheerful. And no, it is not because it’s Corrie’s blog. It’s genuine admiration.
Salon of Art: Basically because she is so versatile and like me seems to go from style to style. I like that a lot.
Robin’s Coloring Book: How cute are they!
Miss Printed Editions: Because she has a heart of gold, and her items – again like Doreen’s (Salon of Art) – are versatile and stylish.
Christie Black: They make me smile.
Many more to be honest – I’d fill the blog up!
What blogs to you follow?
Not many, to be honest. I always look when artists on GCU post their blog etc. but do not actively seek them out. Everyone with a blog should post so that we can see who to follow.
Is there something you’re really proud of having done?
Apart from the having children and bringing them up, I guess my weight loss is No1 at the moment.
If you weren’t an artist, what would you be?
Miserable 😀 but if I could be anything, I’d be a writer – hilarious when you’re dyslexic. Or an interpreter of many languages. This has always been fascinating even though I can barely manage English and Welsh *laughs*
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Thanks for the interview, Moonie! If you would like to participate in an upcoming Artist Interview, get in touch: gcucommunity(at)bigdates.com
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Salon of Art Update!
One of our GCU Community Superstars, Doreen at Salon of Art, has updated her blog and included some lovely images (and links) of other artists’ greeting cards at GCU. Go check it out and leave a comment (if you don’t know WHY you should leave a comment, read this week’s Newsletter #3).
If you make a blog post with links to cards at GCU, we want to hear about it.
Corrie
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Guest Blog: Tom Rent – Facebook Ads
Recently, Tom Rent at Comical Captions experimented with buying Facebook ads to advertise his greeting cards at GCU. Like the helpful guy he is, he’s made a video showing you the steps to take to put your own ad on Facebook. Thanks, Tom! He’s promised a second video letting us know his results – I can’t wait to see that one.
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NEWS: New GCUniversity Video is Available
I’ve just gotten word that our respected GCUniversity has a new video tutorial on using the Card Template. Folks, this is critical information. You probably have no idea how often the hard-working reviewers have to send cards back for editing because of margin issues. Every artists – newbies to experienced oldsters like me – will find this video invaluable. Brush up on your skills or learn something new…check it out!
Remember: the more we can reduce artist errors at the source, the quicker submitted cards will move through the review queue, and approval times will get a lot faster!
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GCU Community Newsletter – May 5, 2011
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Issue #3
SPRING HAS SPRUNG (AND SO HAS MY HAYFEVER)
Welcome to the latest edition of the GCU Community Newsletter.
In addition to my usual eclectic mix of cards selling this time of year at Greeting Card Universe, I’ve seen Nurse’s Day and Mother’s Day coming through my sales reports, and I’ve already started getting orders for Father’s Day (June 19). So far, I’m finding the majority of my sales are earning the normal commission rate. While I make some coupon sales each day, it’s not dominating my earnings report so far, thank goodness. What are you experiencing with GCU’s new Groupon and Plum District coupon campaign?
FYI:I had a shopper make a request for personalized birthday invitations and thank you cards – 100 cards in total.
Hidden Gems: Mothers Day - May 8 - Gina Minton Kearns
After a little back and forth, she told me that since she lived in the UK, she thought the cards would be way too expensive to ship from the U.S. Aha! I was able to let her know that GCU has a printing partner in the UK. I checked the price per card and the shipping charge, and used an on-line currency converter to tell her the price of her order in British pounds at that day’s rate. Turns out it wasn’t as expensive as she thought. The moral of the story? GCU’s new UK based printing partner means shipping costs to European shoppers may be more affordable than they imagine.
On to the other stuff! Last week, our Nuts & Bolts feature on Storefront Banner design explained why it’s important to make a good first impression on shoppers. In a brand new feature, Promotion in Motion, we learned about using social bookmarks to help promote your art, and what no follow/do follow links mean to you. The talented Doreen gave us A Dash of Inspiration – a Cup of Creativity about infrared photography – very interesting! And Ernestine Grindal was in the Design Spotlight with the sweetest Mother’s Day card you’ve ever seen.
Keep up the good work, and don’t forget to pass the love around!
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Sharing the Love
Once you start a blog and begin making regular posts (I recommend once a week or twice a month – you don’t want people to think you’ve abandoned your project or you aren’t serious about your blog), you’ll want to do things to attract more traffic to your blog.
Why? Because if you’re smart – and I know you are – you’ve already decided to use your blog as a vehicle to promote yourself and the art you’re trying to sell (such as greeting cards at Greeting Card Universe). The more visitors you attract to your blog, the more chance they’ll click on a link, the more chance they might turn into shoppers who’ll buy your cards.
Search engines love original content. So do regular people! In Newsletter #1, we talked about how your blog shouldn’t
Hidden Gems: Mothers Day - May 8 - Jen Cosgrove
be just about greeting cards, but about a subject you love (or one that inspires you, or that you find educational or informative) that you tie greeting cards into. Now you’re going to use that original content to draw in visitors, and with any luck, perhaps even backlinks from other blogs (which will increase your page rank with search engines).
Commenting on forums and other blogs is a very easy way to promote your own blog, but you need to do it the smart way. Many blog services allow you to link your name to a URL of your choice. Or you can use a link as part of your signature. However, it’s up to the blog or forum owner (most of the time) to approve or trash your comment. Believe me, if a blog owner visits YOUR blog and sees only irrelevant and spammy promotion, they’re going to dump your comment (and your link) into the garbage.
You want to be choosy about the blogs you put comments on, too. Obvious spam sites will get you nowhere with search engines, and may even harm your blog’s page rank.
So how do you find other blogs that are relevant to yours?
The keyword here is RELEVANT. Don’t bother trying to post a comment on a fishing blog if your blog is about flower arranging. Look for blogs that are about topics relevant to the topics you post on your blog. How do you do that? The easy way is to go to Google Blogs and enter your keyword.
Your search results will give you a list of all blogs where your keyword is used as part of the title and/or the first few sentences. However, suppose you want to also browse people’s blog comments as well? There’s a trick to that. Go to Google once more, and type in the following (one at a time, of course):
site:.com inurl:blog “post a comment” -“comments closed” -“you must be logged in” “YOUR KEYWORD”
site:.org inurl:blog “post a comment” -“comments closed” -“you must be logged in” “YOUR KEYWORD”
site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -“comments closed” -“you must be logged in” “YOUR KEYWORD”
site:.gov inurl:blog “post a comment” -“comments closed” -“you must be logged in” “YOUR KEYWORD”
Note the different extensions. This trick allows you to browse comments on many different blogs for the keyword you entered. These tools can help you find blogs that are relevant to your interests.
A tip: search engines put great weight on links at .edu and .gov sites. If you can manage to get a comment on a forum or blog with either of those extensions, in the world of promotion that’s like finding a gold mine in your backyard.
Next, be sure any comment you leave isn’t of the throwaway “great blog” variety. You need to let the blog owner know you’ve actually spent a little time and read the entry you’re commenting on. For example, a month or so ago I left a comment on a blog post about a charity walk to benefit cancer research. Part of the blog post was about the walk itself, but another part was about the blog owner’s personal experience with cancer. I told the owner I was moved by her post, and commended her courage in writing about her (and her daughter’s) cancer experiences, and wished them both well. The comment was approved. I gained a backlink to my Squidoo lens about greeting cards for cancer patients (which I use to promote my GCU cards). See how this works? Be sincere, not spammy.
Many of us already follow blogs we like. Even if you don’t, I’d like everyone here with a blog (or without, for that matter – perhaps you’ll use a link to your GCU store or a collection you have at GCU) to leave one comment on a blog. If you want to stay safe, check the GCU Community blog roll and leave a comment on a fellow artist’s blog. The more daring can search out a relevant blog using the tools I’ve given you. Either way, let us know how you do.
If you spend just five minutes a day – JUST FIVE MINUTES – leaving one comment on someone’s blog, you’ll promote yourself and your cards.
Next week on Time to Blog, we’ll discuss how guest blogging can attract visitors to your store or site.
Each artist who writes a new blog post or Squidoo lens containing at least 3 links to greeting cards at GCU will be entered in a random drawing for a fantastic book Art Escapes: Daily Exercises and Inspirations for Discovering Greater Creativity and Artistic Confidence (Dory Kanter). “This title for both beginning and experienced artists gives readers ideas for building an art habit. It contains daily projects for drawing, watercolour, mixed media, collage and more. It aims to help readers increase their skill and creativity and find time to make a little bit of art every day.” Simply make your post on or before May 8th, then leave a comment on this blog (or get in touch by email).
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You can edit the inside verse of a card after it’s been approved. When you’re logged in, find your card in the MANAGE CARDS section, then EDIT. Don’t forget to SAVE when you’re done. And don’t forget to check, double check, and even triple check your verse for grammar and spelling as cards already approved don’t go through the review process a second time, even when you edit. Please note: Sometimes, adding inside verse will also necessitate a category change, but artists can’t change a card’s category once it’s been approved. In that case, send a note to the review team: cardreview(at)greetingcarduniverse.com. Be sure to include the PID# as well as the category you want the card moved into.
DID YOU KNOW you can “like” this newsletter or any post on the GCU Community blog, or include them in your social bookmarks? Just click the title of the post, which takes you to the permanent link page. At the bottom of the page you’ll see buttons for social sites like Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. And thanks for sharing!
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GCU Community All-Stars!
This week’s Community All-Star Award winners are: Christie, Betsy, Ernestine and Naquaiya. In addition, Oma and Annielim receive our special Design of the Day Winner Starfor being chosen to grace GCU’s homepage.
Hidden Gems: Fathers Day - June 19 - Sign Language Greetings
And finally, we have two winners of our rare and prestigious Super Star Award: Tom Rent and Doreen Erhardt, for their tireless efforts in helping the artist community with tutorials and other helpful stuff. Please join me in congratulating our winners! (If you win an All-Star award but don’t receive it in your email, please check your spam folder; if you still don’t have it, contact us).
2011 Reminder Time: Since search engines can take up to 6 months to index new content, you should be working on this year’s cards ahead of time for the following holidays:
- September 5 – Labor Day
- September 11 – Grandparents Day
- September 11 – Patriot Day
- September 29 – Rosh Hashana
- October 8 – Yom Kippur
Don’t Forget: To change the date on your year specific cards such as Graduation and New Year’s. While GCU tries to contact artists who’ve been a little absent minded, this takes time that could be spent doing other things… like reviewing cards waiting for approval! If you happen to come across another artist’s card, and you notice they haven’t changed the date, give them a friendly heads-up. They’ll appreciate it.
We Need You!: If you’ve got a blog, a website, a Squidoo lens, or a YouTube video promoting your cards at GCU, or a Facebook or a Twitter account that you use, we want to hear from you! To join the roll calls here, leave a comment or send an email to gcucommunity (at) bigdates.com. We update the roll calls daily, so you’ll never be absent for long. Do you have suggestions? Features you’d like to see added? Tips you want to share? Send them in!
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The next issue of the GCU Community Newsletter will be Thursday, May 12
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CONGRATULATIONS! 5-4-2011
The first Greeting Card Universe Design of the Day winner is:
Oma N. Ramkhelawan at Caribbean Ink.
Congratulations to Oma for her very deserving win. Go check out her winning card on the GCU homepage.
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Promotion in Motion: No Follow / Do Follow
SOCIAL BOOKMARKS AND NO FOLLOW / DO FOLLOW LINKS
Social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and De.li.cious serve a dual purpose – they act as an on-line archive for your list of bookmark links as well as a place where users can share their bookmarks with friends, vote on their favorites, and leave comments.
How does this help you promote your greeting cards at Greeting Card Universe?
First, you might be able to create a profile when you register as a user that allows you to include a link to a website (such as your GCU storefront, hint, hint!). Second, it gets your site out there to be seen by readers interested in your site’s content, hopefully increasing your traffic. Third, by voting and commenting on your friends’ posts, you can invite friends to vote and leave comments on your posts. One hand washes the other, as they say. You might even make friends who have websites or blogs relevant to you, and you can exchange reciprocal links.
What social bookmarking probably won’t do is give you much of what’s known as “link juice.” Let me explain: search engines use very complex formulas to figure out what page rank to assign websites. Page rank means how close to the #1 spot your site will be in results returned for a search. Got it? Okay, so inbound links, sometimes known as “backlinks,” are one part of the formula. What search engines look at with inbound links is 1) how many other high quality (ie, not spam) sites link to your site; and 2) the relevance of those links to your site.
Want to know more about how Google determines page rank? Cruise over to the Wiki.
These days, we’ve got the complication that many sites (such as many of the popular social bookmarking sites) use a little HTML trick known as “no follow.” That means while your links get indexed, search engines will not use those links when determining a website’s page rank. You can learn more about this phenomena here: Do Follow: Increase Your Backlinks with Do Follow Sites. Blame the spammers – they spoiled it for everybody. But that’s okay… no follow links just affect page rank in search results. They can still drive traffic to your site if they’re relevant, so they aren’t totally useless.
It must be said that some controversy exists when it comes to no follow links. A famous search engine (which shall not be named) has been shown to be unpredictable on this issue. Some folks say they serve no purpose, others insist they’re an important part of increasing traffic to your site. What’s known for sure is that search engines are smarter than you think. They look for a mix of high quality sources with original content that link to your website (like blogs, etc… spam-rich sites like link farms carry no weight with them), and they know when somebody’s cheating. Check out this informative blog post: NoFollow vs. DoFollow: Should You Care?
So when you blog or write a Squidoo lens promoting your greeting cards, you’ll want to also use social bookmarking sites to help build traffic, which is the whole reason you’re putting your content out there, right? The whole point of this SEO (search engine optimization) stuff is to get shoppers into your store and buying your cards.
If you haven’t already, go ahead and register at Reddit, De.li.cious, Digg, StumbleUpon, and RedGage, and use their bookmarking systems (careful – submit no more than two links at a time or you might be tagged as a spammer). Be sincere if you decide to make friends – don’t try to befriend everybody in sight. Be relevant. Be respectful.
And don’t forget to bookmark your blog! This can be an oblique way of promoting your cards, by the way. As we’ve talked in Time to Blog in our newsletter, the best way to promote your greeting cards at GCU is to write blog posts that are not about greeting cards. Instead, write about what inspires you, your passion, your hobby, or pick a subject you know something about, and make informative or educational posts. Then tie relevant greeting cards into your posts (you can use the Sell This Card tool to make it easy).
Here’s something you can do right now: if you already have an account with Google services like Gmail, AdSense, or Analytics, you can fill out a Google public profile. When you set up your profile, you’ll be allowed to list links (and link names to serve as anchor text). While these links are “no follow” – thanks a lot, spammers! – and therefore don’t affect page rank, they can still get you traffic to your site. This should be done in addition to any other promotion you’re doing to get your store or artist’s name out there.
Get started with Google profiles here.
Go here for more information on how to add links to your Google profile.
Some Social Bookmarking Sites
Reddit
Digg
De.li.cious
RedGage
StumbleUpon
GCU Community 