Taking Back The Season: A Manifesto

Nov

Taking Back The Season: A Manifesto

by Naomi Dunford

We are the shoppers, and we’ve had enough.

This season, our dollars will make a difference.

We’ve had enough of hearing that your cologne will make her have sex with us, when someone dies of AIDS-related illness every 12 seconds.

We’ve had enough of watching you spend millions of dollars to persuade us that your lip gloss will make us more beautiful, while millions of people in this country eat less than one meal a day.

We’ve had enough of feeling the environment collapse while you cover your useless and disposable products with 7 layers of non-biodegradable packaging.

We’ve had enough of listening to you try to convince our children that the holiday season is about who got the best officially-licensed gifts.

This season, we will teach our children to think about what really matters.

This season, we will do our part to keep John Lennon’s dream of peace alive.

This season, we will help people across the world to Livestrong, warming our hearts at the same time as our bodies.

This season, we will clean our souls as well as our hair.

What You Can Do

When IttyBiz made the front page of Digg, we had been using Amazon advertising for about 6 weeks. On the day we made the front page, we received 23,000 visitors and received 5 times the Amazon income on that single day than we had in the six previous weeks. This was without asking anybody to do a thing.

We’re going to try and replicate that success, and we’d like to do it for charity.

Here’s what you can do:

From now until Christmas, IttyBiz will be donating all of our proceeds to charity. (For information on why we are not mentioning our charity of choice by name, please click here.) If you click on any of IttyBiz’s links to Amazon products, or on the link at the bottom of this post that leads to the Amazon homepage, money from anything you buy will help those in need. Even if you click on the link for the Berenstein Bears book for your nephew and end up buying a blender for your mom, a portion of every single sale goes to a good cause.

The best part? The cost of your item will not change. Your $20 item still costs $20 – but now a portion of that money will go to help those in need.

You were probably going to buy something that they sell anyway – you may as well do it through the link and have a decent portion of the cost go to a great cause.

Each day, in addition to our regular posts, we’ll highlight a new gift item that gives an acceptable portion of it’s proceeds to charity. Click here to subscribe for updates. If you don’t use a feed reader, you can have updates emailed to you by scrolling to the top of this page and inputting your email address. I’ll never see your address – it’s fully automated – so I promise I won’t spam you. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t, because I’m sure you’re very nice.

Here’s the main link you can use to get to the Amazon homepage. Please bookmark it for your future purchases.

Amazon’s Home Page – Do your shopping here.

If you are a member of any social networking or home business groups and you liked this post, it would mean a lot to us if you could vote for it. We might be able to make a really big difference this season, and we’d love it if you would join us. Please, let your friends know. So many people buy from Amazon every single day. Your costs won’t change, and you can be a part of something great.

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Overwhelmed? Freaking out? Borderline hysterical? Click here to get your own small business marketing plan. It’s not scary, I promise.

shane

November 26, 2007

This is a very cool thing naomi. We will help out.

Naomi Dunford

Thank you, Shane. You’re the coolest.

reid

November 27, 2007

rock on naomi. this christmas I’m going to consume my way to positive social change.

Aside from shop shop shopping, and digg digg digging what can we do?

Hi Reid…

Well, for those who are so inclined, there’s blog blog blogging. You can also email everyone with an internet connection or a credit card. (email email emailing just doesn’t have the same ring, you know?)

I appreciate the support. You rule.

Lodewijkvdb

Great initiative Naomi!

I’m not likely to buy from Amazon indeed (waaay too much S&H to the Netherlands), but I’ll support you with social media votes and other ways I can find.

All the best with this!

James Chartrand - JCM Enterprises

That’s very, very big of you, N&J. You have our support and we’ll help out where we can.

Jarkko Laine

Great initiative, Naomi!

In fact I do order from Amazon every now and then (although it’s pretty slow, because I live in Finland), so I’ll consider buying something through you guys.

And blog blog blog will take place this week, of course :)