What is
Find A Groomer Inc.’s goal by offering free
GroomWise™ Blogs?
GroomWise™ is a new
resource from the creators of PetGroomer.com
helping to uplift the professional
reputation of the pet care industry.
Unfortunately pet care knowledge published
in the form of articles often becomes
difficult to find at a later date. At
GroomWise™ authors can present pet care
industry articles both current and past made
available at no charge to GroomWise™
visitors. In this way the pet care industry
retains a valuable archive of knowledge and
experience of its members for many years to
come. It is our hope that GroomWise™ will
also create more camaraderie among authors
in the pet care industry. We also offer free
GroomWise™ Blogs to our banner advertising
sponsors to honor them for helping to make
PetGroomer.com available to everyone with an
interest.
Who may
apply for a free GroomWise™ Blog?
Any pet care industry
author may apply for a free GroomWise™ Blog.
Upcoming authors not yet widely published
may also apply using this form and include
samples of their works to assist us in
making our publishing decision. Banner
advertising sponsors of PetGroomer.com are
guaranteed a GroomWise™ Blog for as long as
they maintain their advertising contract on
a current basis. If you already have a blog
you may mirror its content in whole or part
within your GroomWise™ Blog and enjoy the
opportunity of gaining even more awareness
for your works.
Can
someone be turned down for a free GroomWise™ Blog?
Yes, there are some circumstances where an
author may be refused a blog, or lose their
blog. If the author is also a vendor selling
to pet groomers, and by appearances they
will, or actually do, use their blog to
primarily sell their services or products to
groomers, and they are not an
advertising sponsor of PetGroomer.com, they
may be refused a GroomWise℠ Blog while those
circumstances exist. If they become an
advertising sponsor they do receive a blog
and it is placed with other commercial
blogs. Initially the non-sponsor author is
likely to receive a GroomWise℠ Blog and
their content will be monitored to ensure
that it is not clearly intent on selling
their goods and services so long as they
remain a non-sponsor. In order to protect
the value of our sponsors who make
PetGroomer.com possible we must reserve the
right to refuse blogs which appear to be
commercially oriented and used to circumvent
sponsorship while selling to PetGroomer.com
visitors. We encourage non-sponsor authors
to seek clarification from Stephen,
Webmaster if they have any questions.
My
technical web publishing skills are weak. Is
this hard to do? Will you help?
We create and design your
GroomWise™ Blog template for you. As the
author you only need enter your “posts”
online by accessing your GroomWise™ Blog
with a user name and password. The interface
is very simple. It’s similar to typing a
letter on a computer. However, you do NOT
have to enter your posts online. You may
send your text and any photos (JPG format
only) to our office by email or after
burning them on a CD. We will then process
your posts for you within 3 to 7 days. We do
not accept printed articles that we have to
type without prior arrangement. A small fee
may be involved to cover the cost of our
word processor.
Is my
GroomWise™ Blog really free?
Once approved, your
GroomWise™ Blog is entirely free and comes
with no obligations except to comply with
our terms of use, policies and procedures
and privacy policy described in general
here, and on the short Agreement you sign
after approval. Free means free when we do
business.
How
many people will see my free GroomWise™
Blog?
We cannot accurately
predict how many visitors will view your
free GroomWise™ Blog. PetGroomer.com hosts
some of the highest traffic among all
grooming information websites. Thousands of
pages of PetGroomer.com (comprised of
multiple interlinked websites) have links to
GroomWise™. Our hope is that nearly all
PetGroomer.com visitors link to GroomWise™.
We also submit every GroomWise™ Blog to
major search engines. By doing so web
traffic to your GroomWise™ Blog may come
directly from major search engines like
Yahoo and Google and not just by
PetGroomer.com visitors.
Is there any content I
cannot post in my free GroomWise™ Blog?
Yes there is in order to
protect the goals we have for GroomWise™.
It’s very important that you read and comply
with our direction for content in order to
maintain a GroomWise™ Blog. Your posts and
any graphics cannot be:
• Inappropriate for
children including adult entertainment
or violent.
• Off topic from pet care industry
topics, including religion and politics
which often sparks critical debate and
hurt feelings among readers.
• Inflammatory in nature creating
division among readers.
• Detailed consumer reviews.
o We are creating
camaraderie among readers and
vendors alike. We are not looking
for “Consumer Report” type testing
and reporting. We leave that to
professional and experienced
consumer agencies, not our bloggers.
You may recommend products by name.
We may censure overly critical
reporting of any products or
services offered by pet care
industry vendors. Do not create
division among product and service
vendors.
o Sponsors of PetGroomer.com may not
use their GroomWise™ Blog to compare
and critique the products and/or
services of other pet care industry
vendors including manufacturers,
schools, home study providers,
distributors, mobile conversion
companies and service providers.
Can I
sell products or services in my GroomWise™
Blog?
You may sell products and
services by linking readers of your blog to
your external website you own for that
purpose. In your free GroomWise™ Blog we
will place a graphic banner linked to your
external website.
Can I post articles and documents I wrote in
the past?
Yes please do. You can
archive years of articles even. It’s one of
our primary goals for GroomWise™ to become
an archive for pet care industry writers and
to serve as a reference resource for pet
groomers many years into the future.
Can I
post photographs?
Sure. Graphics add reader
interest and many artistic groomers
comprehend content faster and better with
visual aids. Your pictures should only be in
JPG format and their file size reduced for
fast page loading. Use a “picture shrinking”
service online if you don’t have software
for that purpose. There are free services
available on the Internet. When you don’t
shrink JPG photos your Blog posts will load
much slower and readers may leave. If you
are sending photos to us you can shrink them
first, or we will.
We do expect that you are
the copyright owner of all photographs or
other creative you publish in your free
GroomWise™ Blog, or that you have the proper
permission to do so.
Can I
have a photo album?
You may request a photo
album within your GroomWise™ Blog.
Can I
post advertising or affiliate offers?
No. You can only advertise
your website on your free GroomWise™ Blog.
Marketing and advertising efforts should be
placed on your personal or business website.
At your request, we will setup your free
GroomWise™ Blog with a link to your personal
or company website.
To offset our costs from
providing free blogs we do place some Google
Adsense and that modest revenue belongs to
Find A Groomer Inc. Please note we do not
place Google Adsense or any other
advertising in blogs provided to
PetGroomer.com sponsors. Their blogs are
entirely ad free except for links to their
commercial websites.
You can earn revenue from
your GroomWise™ Blog by linking readers to
your external ecommerce website. We make no
guarantee that your blog will generate
traffic to your external website or result
in sales you conduct there.
Can I
sell advertising space on my GroomWise™
Blog?
No. Your GroomWise™ Blog
and web storage space is loaned to you by
Find A Groomer Inc. at no charge. We do not
sell advertising in your GroomWise™ Blog.
I don’t
want my GroomWise™ Blog readers to comment
on my posts. Do I have to allow comments?
No. Every time you enter a
new post you can turn on or off the ability
to allow readers to comment. If you are new
to blogging you should realize that when you
allow comments you may receive problematic
replies as well as praise. It’s the nature
of interactivity on the Internet. For this
reason we never require you to accept
comments. We do require that you post an
email address for readers to contact you.
Otherwise they are likely to contact us
asking for your contact information. We
suggest you setup a separate email address
for this purpose on your GroomWise™ Blog.
Can I
charge people to access my GroomWise™ Blog?
You may not charge anyone
to access your GroomWise™ Blog. Likewise,
Find A Groomer Inc. does not charge visitors
to access GroomWise™ Blogs.
Can you
protect my copyrights?
Posting creative works in
a GroomWise™ Blog does not convey their
copyrights to Find A Groomer Inc. We can
assist you with copyright protection to a
limited degree. A copyright notice will be
placed on all pages of your GroomWise™ Blog.
We cannot prevent visitors from copying your
articles or creative. Our web host server
attempts to prevent persons from hacking
into your files for illegal access, but we
make no guarantee of absolute success. The
risk of publishing your works at GroomWise™
is similar to risk of publishing them in a
magazine, someone may copy them but you
should file copyright registrations for your
works with the U.S. Copyright Office.
Filings are your responsibility. We do
encourage you to protect your works to the
fullest extent possible. You are expected to
only post text and creative to your free
blog for which you are the copyright owner
or licensee allowed to do so.
Are
there a minimum number of blog posts you
expect from writers?
You may post as much as
like in your GroomWise™ Blog. We do ask that
you make every attempt to post in your blog
at least once a month. The most active blogs
will generally find their way to the top of
our GroomWise™ Blog Directory.
Can I
place works by other authors in my
GroomWise™ Blog?
Within your GroomWise™
Blog you may place links to works by other
authors or creative sources. Do not publish
any works in your blog for which you are not
the legal owner unless you the written
permission of Find A Groomer Inc.
Who
creates my GroomWise™ Blog?
The GroomWise™ Webmaster
creates your GroomWise™ Blog template. You
cannot access the design templates for
security reasons. The GroomWise™ Webmaster
will work with you on a mutually agreed
design for your blog after you are approved.
Where
is my GroomWise™ Blog hosted?
Find A Groomer Inc. uses
the blog hosting services of Typepad, one of
the most professional and full-featured blog
hosting companies in the world. We attempt
to make your GroomWise™ Blog available
24/7/365 but that is conditional on the blog
host vendor we use. We cannot and do not
provide any guarantee for actual
availability of your GroomWise™ Blog.
Typepad strives for 24/7/365 availability
and has a strong track record of achieving
98% or better uptime.
Do you
offer grammar and spelling check?
Your blog’s post page
requires a secret user name and password.
After your login the entry screen provides a
spellchecker, but not a grammar checker.
Good grammar is expected. We encourage
authors to write, spell check and grammar
check their works using a quality word
processor such as Microsoft Word® and
thereafter copy and paste final versions
into their GroomWise™ Blogs.
Is
there a contract or agreement I must sign?
Yes, there is a Agreement
to sign with Find A Groomer Inc. and it
basically serves as your acknowledgement of
the terms of use, conditions, policies and
procedures required to maintain a free
GroomWise™ Blog.
Do you provide stats for my GroomWise™ Blog?
During the initial year of
GroomWise™ stats may not be available.
However, it is our goal to provide you with
the number of visitors monthly to your blog,
but not their identity such as IP addresses
etc in order to protect their privacy.
Statistics are owned by Find A Groomer Inc.
since it is the company contracting and
paying Typepad for hosting services. We are
under no obligation to provide you with
visitor identification, and in fact, our
PetGroomer.com Privacy Policy does not allow
our sharing of visitor information to anyone
including banner advertising sponsors. We
take the privacy protection of our visitors
very seriously. We never sell or share email
addresses of our visitors, nor do we require
email addresses to access GroomWise™.
Can I
collect data regarding visitors to my
GroomWise™ Blog?
This is sensitive subject
and various states have different
regulations. Our PetGroomer.com Privacy
Policy states that we never require visitors
to register or pay for access to any
PetGroomer.com website including
GroomWise.com. You cannot include a
mandatory registration procedure to access
your GroomWise™ Blog. Further you cannot
install any code in your GroomWise™ blog
with the intent to collect statistics
regarding visitors to your GroomWise™ or to
develop visitor identification such as
accepting signups for an external email or
postal mailing list or a Guest Book. You may
of course conduct these procedures at your
own external website.
Do you
submit my GroomWise™ Blog to search engines?
Yes, we do submit your
GroomWise™ Blog to at least 10 major search
engines at no charge to you. We make no
guarantee for results of any kind by this
action. No other publicity is implied or
guaranteed beyond submission to major search
engines and promotion of GroomWise™ at
PetGroomer.com.
Censorship and Termination
If we receive complaints
about the content of your GroomWise™ Blog,
we will contact you to discuss and resolve
the matter. Obviously if your activity is
against our Disclaimer Notice, Terms of Use
and other policies and procedures we will
expect you to amend your works or
presentation. If there are problems reported
to our office related to activities at your
external website where GroomWise™ visitors
were linked to through your blog, we will
contact you to discuss and resolve the
matter. We expect that you will work quickly
with us for a resolve. If we cannot come to
a mutual resolve of the matter we do reserve
the right to terminate your free GroomWise™
Blog at any time without reparations. Please
refer to the Free GroomWise™ Blog Agreement
for details.
If
accepted for a free GroomWise™ Blog, what
will I need to supply?
Please do not forward any
graphics or information mentioned below
until you are approved. Once approved you
sign an Agreement and then work with our
GroomWise™ Webmaster to setup your blog.
Here are the basic requirements after
approval, but don’t rely on this list below.
An email will be sent to you instead with
details after you fill out the Blog Request
& Terms of Service Agreement Form.
• A portrait photo of you
for your GroomWise™ Blog (strongly
recommended).
• A short bio, about 100 words focused on
your professional background related to pets
(required).
• Additional graphics: we need to create a
header for the top of your GroomWise™ Blog
pages. You may design and provide the header
to our office meeting specifications or we
will create one.
• If you plan to link your GroomWise™ Blog
visitors to your external website, an ad
banner linked to your website meeting
specifications will be required too.
What’s
my next step to secure a free GroomWise™
Blog?
You must complete a Blog
Request & Terms of Use Agreement Form online
at:
http://www.groomwise.com/blog_agreement.htm
You fill it out online and
click the Submit button. Your completed form
is then sent to us by email and you will
receive a reply from the GroomWise℠
Webmaster in 1 to 3 days. We may want to get
to know you a little better, perhaps you are
PetGroomer.com sponsor already and we
already know one another. If accepted we
will send you an email with the materials we
need to design your blog, like a short bio
and picture etc.
We appreciate your
interest!
Stephen, GroomWise℠
Webmaster
|
