Fund Raising made easy with Fabulous Photo Gifts

When we sat down and thought long and hard about starting a fundraising scheme that schools, clubs, groups and charities would really use and benefit from, we came up with a shortlist of key features:

1) The scheme had got to be incredibly easy to administer for the schools, groups etc.
2) The rewards had got to be worthwhile a school, group etc taking part.
3) There should be no time limits or restrictions on use.

The result - Funds for Life! A ground-breaking fund raising scheme that any school, group or charity etc can take part in, raising much needed funds for their individual 'good causes' without any complications or form filling. You can earn 20% commission on all qualifying gift orders (certain gifts are excluded from the scheme), for each and every order.

That's £1 for every £5 you spend!

Here's how Funds for Life works:

Your school, group or charity etc contacts Fabulous Photo Gifts for your FREE info pack and 'membership' number.

We send you a few sheets of information about the scheme, what gifts are included etc and a poster/flyer for you to fill in with your own 'scheme member number'.

That's it! You're up and running.

Now all you have to do is remind parents, members etc to use the code whenever they need a gift for someone on our website.

They simply type in your member code once they've finished personalising their items before proceeding to checkout.

We get the order and send you the commission earned on that order to your specified bank account.

There's no time limits or limits on the amount of orders we'll accept - it really is funds for life. All you've got to do is keep reminding your parents or members with your regular newsletters and communiques.

If you've got a website or blog, we can supply a FREE banner (to your size specs) for you to encourage even more people to use your code. Just contact us if you need a banner making.

Funds for LIfe - earn 20% commission on every qualifying order your members or families (and their friends and families - spread the word) place with Fabulous Photo Gifts.

Why are we being so generous?
Well we've got 5 children ourselves between us and we've served on numerous fund raising committee's and PTA's etc so we know hard it can be to raise funds in a way that doesn't involve any work and will work all year round.

Click here to find out more about our brilliant fund raising scheme.

How you arrange your Blog sidebar says a lot about you - SEO Tip

How you arrange the side bar of your Blog reveals a lot about serious you are about connecting with people and making sharing your blog with others.

And no more so than if your blog has a commercial flavour where the life-blood of the exercise is to reach as wide an audience (and potential customers) as possible.

Here are a few tips to help you spread the word.

Place your rss subscribe link and email subscribe links at the very top of your side bar. If they're buried beneath other side panel 'widgets', the chances of them getting seen are pretty slim. It makes sense to make them as visible as possible.

My 'model' for a commercial blogs side panel is this:

RSS / Email and Twitter subscribe links first.
- i like to add a little please comment logo here also -
Your latest offer
Your twitter feed - last 5 comments is plenty
Blog archive
About you.
….anything else.

Even if you're using a standard blogger template, there are still things you can do to make it look a little more unique and business like.

Customise the header with an image - your company logo for example.
Customise the fonts, colours of headings and links etc.
For those comfortable with html and css, consider going into your Blogger template and making it wider than it is at present or add a custom background.

Now that your blog is ready for customers, the next thing you need to do is get both your content 'out there' and let potential customers know your blog exists.

Use social media sites like Digg and Stumbleupon to share your content. To attract readers, publicise your latest posts on Twitter or weave them into your genuine comments on other blogs and forums.

You've got em' - now how to keep em'?

Gaining a new following is all well and good but how exactly are you going to keep them coming back for more?

You've made it easy for them to keep up to date whenever you post something new - via RSS or email alerts - even Twitter is automatically tweeting new posts.

In a word - Content.

Gimmicks are short lived - it's content that will keep people coming back for more. So it may take you a while to discover exactly what sort of content and what style of writing most appeals to your readers.

Vary the styles a bit until you find a format that works for you, but also feels comfortable to write. If you enjoy it, then you're more likely to make a success of it.

A general rule of thumb is shorter posts with links to 'read more', which Blogger now supports, rather than long posts but it really depends on your audience. If they're looking for a really in-depth analysis, then a longer piece might convey that it is more in depth.

Cheers and good luck! - Jonathan.

Jonathan is technical partner for Fabulous Photo Gifts - online personalised photo gifts and presents. When he's not busy updating the website, he likes to blog useful seo tips for other small businesses.

Personalised Baby Photo Albums - 1st pictures

Well Blogger seems to be over its technical issues, so here are a couple of pictures of our lovely new personalised engraved baby photo albums:



Each baby photo album can be engraved with up to 50 characters, on a special metal plague mounted on the bottom-front of the cover.

To see our entire range of personalised engraved baby gifts and moneyboxes, please visit our website.

Personalised Baby Photo Albums - New

Firstly, thank you for your orders for our new range of engraved personalised gifts, which we recently started adding to our range.

In fact, it's been so encouraging that we've extended all ranges - gifts for baby & child, gifts for her and gifts for him & novelty gifts.

Under Gifts for Baby & Child - Moneyboxes etc, you'll find 4 new gift ideas:

Silver Plated Egg Cup & Spoon: Silver plated egg cup and spoon with teddy design, which can be personalised (engraved) with any name or message of up to 15 letters.

Silver Plated Yoyo: Silver plated yoyo measures 5.5cm x 5.5cm x 3cm and is a great gift for a little bridesmaid, flower girl, pageboy or any childrens special, which can be engraved with any message of up to 60 letters.

Baby Boy Fabric Photo Album (6x4"): Baby boy fabric photo album holds 100 6 x 4 inch photos, which can be engraved with any message of up to 50 letters on a metal plaque on the front fabric cover.

Baby Girl Fabric Photo Album (6x4"): Baby Girl fabric photo album holds 100 6 x 4 inch photos, which can be engraved with any message of up to 50 letters on a metal plaque on the front fabric cover.

We'll be back later in the week to tell you more about our new His n' Her engraved gift selections.

Guaranteed courier delivery available from Monday 19th October

Like any business that relies on the Royal Mail to deliver orders to its customers, we've been very concerned by the recent proposed strike action by Royal Mail workers and how that would affect your personalised gift deliveries.

Fabulous Photo Gifts is not here to take either side in this dispute. We would politely ask, on behalf of our customers that all sides return to the negotiating table and 'get it sorted'.

In the meantime, we've been forced to explore alternative delivery methods and we're very pleased to announce that, from Monday 19th October, we'll be able to offer a guaranteed courier delivery service option on most of our personalised gift range.

When you add a photo gift to your basket and you've personalised it, you'll see those gifts available by courier delivery offer that choice.

Because our photo gift range is so extensive, we're unfortunately unable to offer it on all our gift ideas, hence the option appearing 'per item'.

When you're ordering more than one gift and one or more have the courier delivery option, you only need to specify it for the first item in your basket.

Otherwise you'll find you're adding the extra courier charge multiple times.

Please note: Our guaranteed courier delivery service is not a guaranteed next-day delivery service. The guaranteed delivery will show you the date by which we'll deliver your item/s (available on guaranteed delivery).

Fabulous Photo Gifts is not the 'fast-food' of photo gifts. On each order, your photograph is hand adjusted for balance and tone, before being printed and hand pressed etc. Much of our gift range involves heat pressing at very high temperatures - sometimes for 20 minutes or more so it takes a while for them to call down during final pressing.

Your order is then hand packed, taking care to offer each item the maximum protection on it's journey to you.

Fabulous Photo Gifts is all about choice so if you're happy to pay our standard delivery charge and have your order despatched via Royal Mail, then there is still that option available.

Standard delivery is still £2.49. Selecting our guaranteed courier delivery service option will add £5 to your order but (where available), it will ensure you receive your order within a guaranteed time frame, avoiding the possibility of it loitering at the back of some sorting office whilst the Royal Mail work through accumulated back-log of deliveries.

photo credit: winton

Two new engraved money boxes to choose from

If you're looking for the perfect Christening gift or baby's first Christmas present - well it doesn't have to be for a baby - we'd like to tell you about two new money boxes we've just added to the sterling silver engraved money box collection at Fabulous Photo Gifts.

We can now offer you a Digger shaped money box which has room for a 60 character engraved message on the roof of the drivers cab.


We've also introduced a special silver plated train money box. Again, the train can be engraved with your own message of up to 60 characters. What makes this train perfect for a baby gift is the wagon which has a special compartment for baby's first lock of hair and first tooth.


You'll find loads more engraved gift ideas for children, ladies and men on our website and it couldn't be easier to order. Simply choose your preferred engraved gift, personalise it by entering your text - a counter will tell you how many letter you've got left. When you're happy with the message, press confirm and either shop for more gift items or checkout and pay online.

Your engraved gifts will be personalised and dispatched normally within 10 days.

Mary's Wedding

Meet Mary - a typical photo gift customer.

The following is based on a true customer order.

Mary is getting married next month. Everything's booked, the invitations are coming back in nicely and the honeymoon flight tickets arrived in the post this morning. Everyone is getting very excited.

That includes her two little nephews who are going to be pageboys. They've promised to be on their best behaviour but Mary's worried that when it comes to the speeches, they'll soon get fed up of 'sitting quietly'.

Luckily, her chief bridesmaid suggested Fabulous Photo Gifts and getting both boys a personalised wooden jigsaw puzzle which they can unwrap before the speeches and build whilst the speeches are taking place.

Luke loves motorbikes and there's a great picture of him sitting on Uncle Steve's motorbike - that'll make a brilliant jigsaw picture. Mark's more into his pets so his Mum secretly took a picture of his hamsters in their cage - won't he be surprised?

Mary got her nephews photographs and went online to Fabulous Photo Gifts, chose our 30 piece medium wooden jigsaws and personalised them with the two photographs.

We received Mary's order and had the order printed and pressed and in the post that week.

Mary was delighted with her jigsaws - so much so that she wrote us a short email thanking us and telling us who the jigsaws were intended for and her idea for the wedding.

Fabulous Photo Gifts - not just for Christmas and Birthdays.

photo credit: neate photos