A fun place to play

Thanks so much for visiting the stampin411 blog and for those of you that play along thank you.

There has been a few concerns raised with some policies that went out to all Stampin' Up! demonstrators this week. I feel that this does not affect our efforts here at the Stamping 411 blog. Let me explain a little bit.

I'm not sure if you have noticed, but all of our operators have agreed that Stamping 411 is a place to share information only. Each of us, send our customers to this blog and on the 411 post, we do not market to you. So, you will not find "buy from me now" or "sign up with me today" in the posts that are for this blog from the operators. We have agreed not to use our blog in that way.

When this blog was brand new, the vision was simple. We wanted a place to send our customers so they could learn the basics. They can go back to "how to read a ruler" over and over again, if they forget what 4 and 7/16" looks like on a ruler. It is a shared resource for the seven of us with one another and you. We want you to feel comfortable sending your customers here, knowing that they will not be sent onto a "sales floor." We want to help our customers, and help anyone who would like to play along and read our posts at the same time.

As a blogger, the world is your marketplace, and everyone has the right to blog about what they wish in their own space.

We humbly request that when you play along, that you refrain from putting sales stuff in your posts, and know that we will too. If someone sees a card that you make here, and they seek you out, you will hear from them (so fun and wonderful for you)! We just do not want 411 to become another marketing tool. The blog was made for fun and sharing. More importantly, it was made to help the new stamper/paper crafter learn the basics.

The seven of us realize, we can do this much better together, (training our customers who are new, how to use their awesome products) than we can separately.

By following this one rule, we will also be within our guidelines with the contracts that we all signed for non competition. There has been much speculation this week about what the rules are from Stampin' Up! and I would refer you to your demonstrator to get the specific details on that. The rule was released and clarified this week, and there are all sorts of rumors, so I am only commenting on what we are doing moving forward.

I'm pretty sure this will be the one rule that we need, but we're new at this too... Our operator, Robin wrote back to someone who was asking about the announcements and I like the way that she explained it, so I'm "casing" her words.

Robin wrote:
"As much as the operators love SU! and are loyal to the company and their products, we and SU! understand that there are many products that can spur your creativity. We want you to feel free to play with the challenges each week with your choice. We only ask that you help us to honor our contracts by not selling directly from your blog and then linking back to us."

Thanks so much for your understanding. We look forward to seeing your awesome creations!
Selene Kempton ~ list mom