Calling All Bunny Collectors...

Yesterday, I made the first post in my blog. It took me a few tries to get it looking the way I wanted, and I had to fix all of my typos, which took a little doing. But finally, it was done, and it was time to put it out there.

But, I thought to myself…what if no one sees it? It probably won’t show up on search engines, and even if other collectors go to blogspot, they probably wouldn’t be able to pick up on my little blog out of the thousands that are listed.

Then, I had a brainstorm. Ebay! That mecca of bunnydom…which oh-so-conveniently supplies contact information about its members.

So I went to ebay. The first thing I did was look up their rules regarding the contact of their members.

To sum it up, you can’t contact other members with the intent of selling something outside of ebay. No spam, no spoofs. You can’t put member information on another site. You can’t put people into an e-mail list without their permission. Ebay doesn’t regulate e-mails sent via their site, but they do make sure that said messages are free from virus and other nasty things.

Okay. I’m not selling anything. I just want to contact fellow collectors. I decided the best thing to do would be to visit the Blushing Bunnies auctions and see who was bidding, then use the ebay “Contact a Member” feature to invite them to my blog.

That way, the members I contacted would have the assurance that the message contained nothing dangerous to their computer, and they could also access MY information, including my feedback.

The only drawback to the member contact feature is that you are limited to a certain number of characters. I tried to make my requests as concise as possible. I chose about 15 members who were bidding on the bunnies and sent them this message-

“Hello,

I am contacting you because I noticed that you have purchased My Blushing Bunnies on ebay.

I have been a collector since 1995, and I believe I have the entire collection, except for a couple of shelves.

Frankly, I miss the hunt.

There are no online resources for bunny collectors that I've seen-no message boards or groups or anything like that.

I decided to start a blog about my collection. I'll be talking about different topics of interest to collectors, and sharing the stories and pictures that other collectors send me.

I'm not selling anything. Or infringing on copyright. I just want to talk about the collection I love so much with people who like it, too.

I have good feedback at ebay-I've been a member for a long time. I won't be sending you viruses or spam or stupid chain letters.

My blog is at a respectable, public site, blogspot, which can be found at www.blogger.com.

http://ruthsblushingbunnies.blogspot.com/

Thanks for your time.
Melissa”

I wrote down the user names of the people that I contacted, just so I would remember that I’d already contacted them. That way, I wouldn’t bother them with future invites if they weren’t interested. I didn’t want to offend or harass anyone at all.

I just knew the frustration of trying to find out more about the collection and not having a single online resource. No websites, message boards, collector’s clubs…and even Enesco wasn’t very helpful. I’d sent e-mails and even snail mails to the company, trying to find out different things about the collection, but never received a reply.

I was a little nervous, wondering about the response of the people I contacted. For all I knew, they might be offended; maybe they’d just completely ignore it.

I opened my inbox to find several replies from some of the people I contacted, and they were all quite positive about it, to my great relief and delight.

I’m looking forward to my future blogging, and hearing about other people’s Blushing Bunnies!

Melissa