This morning I have taken delivery of a set of greetings cards that I made on Zazzle.co.uk. They’re all photos I took, showing plants and wildlife in our garden and places we have visited. I am really pleased with the quality – they’ve come out very nicely and I am going to use them as thank you cards (although they’re blank inside, so suitable for every occasion :)

If you want to have a look (and maybe order a few yourself) then take a look at Zazzle.co.uk or Zazzle.com. Bear in mind that they have economies of scale, so you automatically save money if you order 10 or more (they don’t all have to be from my designs).

And don’t forget to check out our Zazzle offer pages (for Zazzle UK and Zazzle.com) before you check out, as we may be able to save you even more money.

I hope you like them!

It’s nearly a year now since I have (mostly) given up cow’s milk. I can cope with small amounts now and again, but any attempt to have cow’s milk products on a regular basis makes me uncomfortable and isn’t worth it. I am fine with goat’s milk on cereal and in tea; when I cook at home I use goat’s milk and butter, and Pete is fine with that. It’s hard to taste any difference in cooked foods, anyway.

One of the few things we have struggled with is finding a decent curry sauce that is free from cow’s milk. They’re either too fiery or completely insipid and leave a lot to be desired. But that has now changed, after a spontaneous visit to a local farm shop uncovered the range of curry sauces and chutneys (achars) from Ghurka Fine Foods.

For our first encounter I choose the mildest of the sauces on offer – the Masu cooking sauce has a heat rating of 1 (out of 5) and of itself is vegan although they recommend using it with red meat. We happened to have some lamb mince in the fridge, so today we cooked that up with the sauce, two onions and plenty of peas (Pete loves peas in curry!).

The result was delicious. Although there is not a hint of heat in the sauce, it still has plenty of flavour. We both loved it, without reservation, and would happily buy it again. Our local stockist had at least one other flavour on offer (and several chutneys), which was a heat rating of 3, and we’re confident enough of the quality of the range to give that one a go next time as well. And we’ll be keeping an eye out for the Ghurka Fine Foods range on supermarket shelves from now on.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have new absinthe. And lots of it.

The nice Mr DHL delivered a consignment this afternoon direct from the lovely people at Absinthe-Shop.com to fill the void (and shelf space) left by more than a year of me not buying any absinthe.

My absinthe purchasing history has been somewhat chequered. You may recall the unpleasant eAbsinthe brouhaha from last year which – frankly – put me off buying for some considerable time. I’m very pleased to say that the ordering process from absinthe-shop.com was painless, simple and instilled way more confidence in anything (the now-defunct) eAbsinthe shop ever did.

The promise I made to myself was that I would sell stuff I no longer have reason to keep and use some of the money to spend on something I enjoy, in this case absinthe. For point of reference, I ordered four bottles in this shipment, enough to last me a year or more:

• La Fée XS Francaise
• La Fée XS Suisse
• Mansinthe
• Aderlass

(The Mansinthe and Aderlass were bought as an appropriately-named Darkness special offer combo)

I am by no means an absinthe expert or even a connoisseur. I don’t drink lurid, luminous absinthe in those horrid shots, nor do I set fire to it (though I used to, I must admit). It’s a drink I take with ice water and sugar, and I enjoy it. It’s a ritual.

I enjoy it to the point that there are very few other alcoholic drinks I partake in. I’m partial to Jägermeister any time of the year, and an occasional Tanqueray (gin) and Fever Tree tonic in summer – the absolute best way to enjoy g&t, in my humble etc, but that’s about it.

Back to the Absinthe Shop order. Here’s the timeline:

• Friday, March 12th, 2010 = Order placed, just after lunchtime UK time
• The Absinthe-Shop.com pixies packed my goodies and despatched them
• Tuesday, March 16th = Order arrived, courtesy of Mr DHL

Even with a non-working weekend in the middle, that’s essentially two business days for international delivery, including a cross-channel run – the package was dispatched from Heidelberg in Germany, which is by far the best service I’ve had from any online absinthe delivery, ever.

Packaging-wise, there are no complaints: a very sturdy cardboard box, well-fitting around the bottles (two of which, the La Fée XS, were boxed), with additional internal card protection and scrunched up paper for the non-boxed bottles. No box damage at all en route, the package could just as well have come from around the corner consider the tip-cop condition it was in.

All things considered, I’m very pleased. The memories of the eAbsinthe disaster are now long gone.

There are two episodes of ENPS waiting to be uploaded (unless Pete did it last night while I was sleeping) and if you listen to the second one you might get the impression that I forgot my mum’s birthday. I didn’t forget my mum’s birthday – I just forget it was yesterday. I don’t check the date every day now that I work for myself, from home. I bought the card a fortnight ago, I just never got around to posting it.

Anyway, to make up for it, I have bought my mum some flowers. And not your run-of-the-mill flowers, either. I’ve bought my mum a seasonal, British-grown bouquet from Wiggly Wigglers. Low flower miles! Environmentally friendly flowers! I think most, if not all of them, are grown on the Wiggly farm in Herefordshire.

As I am a subscriber to the Wiggly e-news bulletin, I also had a code from a free bird feeder and seed, so I bolted that on. It’s a bit of an odd birthday present, perhaps, but mum likes birds so she will appreciate it.

Where do you buy your green office products? It can be a tricky question to answer, as not only do you have to find a reputable stockist for some rather unusual items, but really you should be checking their ethical credentials as well.

You don’t need to worry about that if you shop at the Green Shopping Catalogue, as Pete and I can vouch for the fact that they’re lovely people with the highest ethical standards – we’ve met them!

They’re not an office supply company, but they do have lots of lovely things that green businesses and workers would love to get their hands on, including energy-saving devices like the OWL wireless monitor and the Bye Bye Standby energy-saving kit. They’ve also got some great solar chargers if you want to take your eco business on the road.

Another great product for a green office is the Tefal Quick Cup that combines a water filter with a kettle that boils just one cup of water at a time. And there are items to help you recycle as well – including the Biobox Kitchen Caddy, a bottle and can crusher and a logmaker that allows you to turn all that waste office paper into fuel!

Don’t forget to check out the books, too, to learn more about living a sustainable lifestyle. Those of you with short commutes might find a copy of Bike Easy helps you to transition to carbon-neutral transport.

And we have an exclusive discount for you! If you spend £25 or more at the Green Shopping Catalogue before the end of September, you can save £5 on your order by using the coupon code GS£5OFFSEPT.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered myself a couple of t-shirts from Eko Noiz, because their Grow Your Own design is very suitable for an alternative kitchen gardener, as are their fabrics – you can choose from organic cotton, bamboo, hemp and recycled plastic bottle. And many of their prices include a £2 donation to an ethical charity – the Grow Your Own shirts support the Permaculture Association.

I went for one of the white bamboo shirts and a black recycled bottle shirt with fluorescent green ink. They arrived this morning, and are in the wash to get rid of the ‘new’ smell. The black one is lovely; the white one is a little too see-through for everyday wear and will no doubt be something I wear over my long-sleeved shirts when the weather is cooler.

They included the stickers shown above in the package – Pete has snaffled ‘Recycle or die’ already for his laptop. I will need to find an Earth Mom to give a good home to the second! Also impressive are their labels:

They’re hand-painted on the back of cardboard from cereal boxes. So all very green, although it appears that someone in the office is a fan of Coco Pops…. :D

I’ve never been one to sit back and just appreciate life, but it’s something I’ve been trying to get into of late. And now I have a shiny new chair that lets me do just that – outside in the garden.

My Planet Chair is just about the most comfortable thing I’ve ever sat in, and it folds up like a deck chair and I can carry it out into the garden or bring it back inside depending on what I’m doing.

So this morning I have been just sitting in the garden, catching some rays, listening to the birds tweet and feeling the breeze ruffle my hair. If there were roses, I would have been smelling them too, but it’s too early in the year ;)

The City Link man is coming tomorrow, bringing more goodies care of Amazon Prime. This one is a book to go with a TV series that just started yesterday – Grow Your Own Drugs. And now that I’ve mentioned that we’re going to get all kinds of odd people visiting the website… ;)

Anyhoooo… in the current economic climate there are plenty of people who aren’t in the market for having goodies delivered from Amazon or anyone else – but I’ll let you into a little secret: I wasn’t either, last year, and yet the occasional package still arrived – having cost me nothing but a little time.

There are lots of survey sites all over the internet that exchange cold hard cash or reward points for some of your opinions. Some are better than others; YouGov is a good one, although it takes a while to build yourself up to the £50 cash payout and there are plenty more that are open to everyone. Be a bit careful when you sign up – some are scams, but you’re much less likely to fall foul of a survey site (which needs quite a hefty infrastructure) than those awful pay-per-click schemes.

Anyway, if you’re still employed and can answer survey questions about business stuff then have a look at QNA. They pay out good rewards to people in business for participating in their online surveys. I’ve been doing it for some time now, there’s no commitment and it is genuine – I receive Amazon vouchers for each survey that I complete. You should take a look at it, here’s the link to their website, where you can read more about it and register to take their surveys.

Signup for QNA Membership

The company behind it is Vanson Bourne, a well-known market research company in the technology and business-to-business field. I don’t get invited to surveys particularly often, but each time I complete one I get £5/£10 in Amazon vouchers – a nice chunk towards a book or a DVD. The amount you’ll receive is mentioned in the invite email, and once you’ve completed the survey you don’t have long to wait until your reward plops into your inbox as well. And then you’ve got the joy of choosing what you spend it on, and later still the joy of it actually arriving.

A little bit of Amazonia can go a long way when you’re strapped for cash….

Preamble
I’d like to tell you about a way to get money off a shiny new computer. Technically, it works for more than just computers, but I’m currently using this method to get money off a new Mac Pro in a couple of months.

First things first: this is not illegal. It’s not multi-level marketing, it’s not pyramid selling, it’s nothing ‘dodgy’. It involves knowing how some systems work, and using them to your advantage. No rules are broken, and it’s all above board.

There are a few pre-flight checks for eligibility (arguably, there are even ways around this list, but that’s left as an exercise for the reader, should they be interested in pushing the proverbial envelope further):

i) you must be resident in the UK
ii) you must be in the catchment area of a John Lewis store, either delivery or collection
iii) you must be able to wait a while for the relevant pieces to fit into place
iv) have an active website with English-language (optional, but useful to earn an extra few pennies)

At a high level, it works like this:

i) buy John Lewis gift vouchers from Euroffice
ii) earn extra bonus points for buying said vouchers
iii) take advantage of offers to earn more bonus points
iv) cash-in bonus points for more (free) John Lewis vouchers
v) take advantage of Euroffice offers to get more vouchers/bonus points
vi) earn extra commission from John Lewis and Euroffice affiliate schemes

This is a long post, so let’s take it step by step. Firstly, in the interests of disclosure, some of the links article that bounce you to other sites are affiliate links – should you buy anything, I will benefit financially – it won’t cost you any money, it’s essentially a commission from the retailer/vendor for me referring a sale to them. I’m going to be showing you how to set this up yourself – it’s all part and parcel of the referral system, and the way I see it, I can impart some useful knowledge to you, and have a few pennies for my trouble. That’s the disclaimer bit over with – let’s continue.

Select your product
In this instance I’ll be using the example of a new Mac Pro. I’m using this for a number of reasons:

i) I’m going through this very process myself at present with the intention of bying a Mac Pro
ii) John Lewis Apple prices are, as near as dammit, the same as Apple retail prices
iii) The retailer margins (profit) on Apple kit are so small that it’s near impossible to get Apple kit considerably cheaper without importing it, making John Lewis a good deal
iv) John Lewis include a 2 year guarantee on a lot of electronics, normal Apple guarantee is year
v) Visiting John Lewis is a surreal experience for me: it’s as close to a middle-class, white ghetto as you can get (at least in my experience), and some of the stuff there is waaaay out of my price range, so I feel a bit scruffy and poor
vi) John Lewis staff are, in my experience, smart and on-the-ball – which counts for a lot if you decide to collect your order

Compare and check your prices
Right, so let’s find our Mac Pro and check the price isn’t too different to Apple. First stop, Apple Store UK – Mac Pro is here (click image for bigger version):

And then, check John Lewis – their Mac Pro page is here (click for bigger version):

At the time of writing, Apple are selling a base-level Mac pro for 1712GBP, and John Lewis are selling the same thing Mac Pro for 1710GBP. Virtually no difference in price, and there’s an extended warranty included in the price. Hold that thought, we’ll return to it later.

Voucher politics
The UK gift voucher market is a funny thing – vendors and retailers offer vouchers for sale to consumers at face value – that is, a ten pound voucher can be had for ten pounds sterling. A straight swap. Although vouchers are traditionally used as gifts and incentives, the percentage of them that are actually redeemed in store is surprisingly low. Think about it – did you get a gift voucher from someone last birthday, or Christmas? How about your birthday five years ago? They make good bookmarks, or sometimes just end up in piles of paperwork stashed somewhere in the house. Some are even sold on eBay at less than face value.

Now, the retailer has sold this voucher for its face value – they have their money already. They don’t give two hoots if you spend it or not. Their books are up to date, job done. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence of 50% of vouchers issued never being redeemed – the actual figure is probably different, but you get the idea. This doesn’t surprise me – vouchers don’t have a picture of The Queen on ‘em, so they don’t have as big or such an immediate value to some people.

Right, we’ve established that retailers are happy to sell vouchers to consumers over the counter. They’re also happy to sell to businesses, usually at a discount – say, 10-15% off face value, assuming a large number are purchased in one sitting (hundreds of pounds, sometimes thousands). The retailer gets their money upfront, the purchaser gets a good deal, the final recipient gets a voucher that they may or may not redeem.

Knowing that vendors are more than happy to supply vouchers as fast as their print presses can supply them and that some businesses are happy to buy in bulk, these bits of info can be used to your advantage.

Enter Euroffice
Euroffice sell stationery. They sell lots and lots of it, they stack it high, they sell it cheap, and they have a very polished operation that runs like clockwork. They also sell vouchers. In this instance, they sell John Lewis vouchers in 10GBP and 20GBP denominations. Sure, they sell them at face value, as you would expect of a reseller, but the fun starts with the ‘extras’ they offer.

Any purchase you make at Euroffice gets you loyalty points, a bit like a supermarket card. There’s a sign-up bonus to get you started, a bonus after about 5 or so orders, a bonus if you spend >100GBP in one go and correctly answer the question, all of which can be redeemed for – you guessed it – vouchers. The Euroffice bonus scheme appears to give you about 1% back for your purchases, in line with most supermarket schemes, and a 10GBP voucher ‘costs’ about 12GBP in bonus points, a 20GBP voucher costs about 23.50GBP. I can’t explain this more-than-face-value anomaly, especially with the reductions they get when they buy vouchers in bulk, but it’s free, so let’s not dwell on it.

Mailshot madness
The really good deals crop up with the Euroffice mailouts – of an average couple of weeks, there will be a ‘spend x and get y free’ mailshot from Euroffice. Truth be told, I received one this morning, which prompted me to write this post.

Today’s mailshot offer was ‘free 20GBP voucher with 159GBP spend‘. So, spending 160GBP on 8× 20GBP John Lewis vouchers would effectively get me 180GBP worth of vouchers, or a an additional 12% return on my investment, essentially risk free (yes, John Lewis might fold, Euroffice might fold, let’s now split hairs).

Spending 160GBP got me:
i) 160GBP of John Lewis vouchers, with free recorded delivery
ii) 20GBP of free John Lewis vouchers
iii) 160 loyalty points, worth about 1.30GBP or so, give or take
iv) 100 loyalty points, worth about 0.83GBP or so, for spending >100GBP and getting the bonus question right
v) 12.80GBP in referral commission – more on this later

The return is about 35GBP on top of a 160GBP spend. That’s about 20%, if my sums are right.

Referral commission
The last thing I mentioned in the list above is referral commission. Euroffice (along with John Lewis and Apple, coincidentally) operate an affiliate scheme via Tradedoubler. That is, they will pay people like me (known as affiliates) to persuade people to buy from them (known as merchants). In return, I get a small percentage of the final sale value. In the case of Euroffice, it’s about 8%. As an affiliate on the Euroffice program, I am entitled (and encouraged) to buy stuff via my own links. This is an excerpt from the Tradedoubler FAQ:

“Affiliates are allowed to buy via their own links and encouraged to do so”

Right off the bat, there’s an 8% referral on every purchase. If I send more orders through to Euroffice, that 8% rises in increments to 11%. John Lewis offer a few percent on purchases, though it’s quite small on electronic stuff, and Apple offer up a few percent, too – though clearly you can’t spend John Lewis vouchers at the Apple Store.

The final numbers
Our new Mac Pro from John Lewis is going to cost 1710GBP, meaning we’ll need 171× 10GBP vouchers. If we had that money to spend this week (during the current promotion), and a public website which fits the bill for Euroffice criteria, here’s a neat way of saving a packet on a new Mac:

Follow this procedure
i) have a website that’s not porn-y, obscene or hateful
ii) apply to Tradedoubler, get accepted
iii) apply to the Euroffice campaign, get accepted
iv) apply to the John Lewis campaign, get accepted
v) buy 160GBP of John Lewis vouchers from Euroffice, using your own referral link
vi) answer the bonus checkout question in each transaction

The 160GBP you spend on vouchers will result in 180GBP worth of vouchers, at least for the duration of this promotion.

Next – the bit that takes a bit of thinking about: repeat that ‘buy 160GBP of vouchers’ step 8 more times (and don’t forget to answer the bonus question), adding an extra 10GBP voucher into one of the transactions – this will give you 1630GBP in vouchers, 1450 bonus points from purchases and 900 bonus points from the checkout question. Still with me? Good. Next…

Cash in your 2350 points (1450 points from purchases, 900 from your 9 bonus questions) for a 20GBP voucher, and add a further 60GBP of vouchers to your order.

When you have your vouchers, redeem your vouchers at John Lewis, either at the website (for an extra % or so in commission) or in person at a store. Finally, receive 120.80GBP in commission from Eurofffice (via Tradedoubler), spend it on something nice. This 120GBP may be higher if you a) refer more sales and b) sign up for more campaigns – at the base rate of 8% on a Euroffice transaction, you’ll get 120.80GBP commission on a spend of 1510GBP.

If you do this, your 1710GBP Mac Pro will have cost you 1510GBP in vouchers, and you’ll have 120GBP headed your way from Tradedoubler – so the net price will actually be 1390GBP – a saving of about 19% overall.

Nice, huh?

Not just Mac Pro
I used an example of a Mac Pro to show how it’s done – you can repeat this process for any other Apple stuff at John Lewis – or even other non-Apple stuff. Just be aware that you’re unlikely to find industry-beating deals at John Lewis, you’ll certainly find cheaper prices for most things at John Lewis in other stores, or elsewhere on the web.

This example works best because the margins are tight, the resulting package (goods plus warranty) is better that you can get elsewhere and considerably cheaper than elsewhere.

Let me know how you get on. I’m aiming to have enough vouchers to get my shiny new Mac Pro in about March or April time, I’ll keep you posted.