A contest ongoing

We have the second contest ongoing in Mini treasures wiki this summer. This time Vesi Koleva was the one to sponsor us with this cool set of a rose and a bread board. Looks good does it? :) To participate our contest go to spreading the word page and leave a comment - tell what you have done to promote our wiki and you might get Vesi´s miniatures :).

2nd anniversary coming

Hi friends!

Amazing thing - I noticed we have 100 followers in this blog. Thank you so much for your interest :).

Next week will be a special one - Mini treasures wiki will be 2 years old on 14th April. Last year I organized a virtual party and had a lot of fun. I was planning something similar this year with contests and everything but have been too busy to organize it. For example last week I visited Denmark for a conference that was held in Lego hotel - what an inspiring place it was! Too bad the park itself was closed.

So I was about to tell you that there will be no party at all but felt too bad about that so here it is: a page for us to celebrate the occasion again.

And there will be one contest - I will let you know who of you has brought most traffic to our wiki during the last year. :)

New ideas needed for promo

Lately I have notice a lot of new activity in Mini treasures wiki which is just great :). But as the owner I am not content - I want to have even more :).

So now I am asking if you can come up with new ways of promoting - how can we get even more miniaturists to visit our site? At the moment we have about 200 daily visitors (and over 4000 monthly visitors) but I know we could get much more. So shoot me! What could we do? Is there someone of you who would like to interview me for a blog or a mag? Could you tell about the wiki in your club meetings or for your forums? Should we arrange a big contest? Pleeeeeeeeease - I need new ideas my friends :).

PS. If you host a mini site and follow your stats it would be nice to hear about your traffic.

Blog buttons

Have you already added a button for Mini treasures to your blog? If not, do it now and get your button from here.

Many ways of being part of MTW community

Do you know that anyone can edit Mini treasures wiki?

Do you know that you can add links to your web sites (photo albums, blogs, mini shops and other mini sites)? Start by introducing yourself.

You can also promote other mini things you like, e.g. museums, books, shops, brands, cool projects.

You are also encouraged to
- write instructions related miniature, e.g. in trash minis.
- correct all the grammar mistakes I have made :)

Do you know you can add pictures of your minis? You can add them either in our Flickr group or directly to our wiki. See wiki faq to learn how.

Do you know that you can help promoting MTW? E.g. by
-telling about it to your friends (e.g. in club meetings or forums), use e.g. wiki abc to get you started or ask help from me
-adding wiki link or button for your site
-joining our Facebook page or
-following our Twitter account,

The best way of being part of our community is of course reading the wiki pages - after all the wiki is made for readers. :)

From now on I'll be mainly offline until I go back home. You can follow me either in Facebook or in Twitter.

Mini treasures @ Facebook

Improving a website is about learning from your mistakes. The more mistakes you correct the better the site will be.

5 days ago I made one of the right decisions - I chose two new moderators to our Facebook page to make it more active. Debbie Wright is one of the most active Facebookers I know and as she has been actively pushing miniaturists to network with me I thought she would do wonderful job at Facebook too. My other co-moderator is Linda, the most active person in Mini treasures wiki (we are SO FORTUNATE that she found us). I am very pleased to have these ladies on board helping me :). And just look what they did for the amount of Facebook fans (officially people who "like" MTW) - look at the peak! Amazing!

Speaking of Facebook I am not very active in networking with people there. I am accepting there only people I have met in real life or who I have learnt to know in Internet. Lately I have got a lot of friend invites and it makes me sad not to accept them but I try to keep up with my policy. The amounts of contacts in other services (Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter) are much bigger, network with me in them if you want.

But now I would be interested to hear your personal Facebook policy :).

Ps. BTW we have a short url for our page: http://www.facebook.com/minitreasures

Another birthday coming: Flickr group 1 year

We just had our first birthday for the wiki. On Friday our Flickr group will be one year old :). I will post some highlights and stats on weekend. Help us to make the group even richer - tell your friends about it and add pictures of all your mini treasures. If you don't have an account in Flickr yet, get one to join all the fun :).

MTW Award 2010 #mtw1year

As mentioned few times it is time to celebrate our one year old wiki and how else would I celebrate it than with you my friends? I decided to promote the people who have brought most traffic to the wiki with an award so if you are one of them - congrats: you have a very nice and popular mini site and I am proud that you have been recommending Mini treasures wiki. So take one of the Award pictures from this blog entry and add it to your mini site.

I took the Google Analytics in use only in November so the results are now based on the activity during Nov 2009 - 14 April 2010. The forums are excluded from the results.

So the winners of the
first MTW Awards are...

1. jasminasnoussi.punt.nl
2. poohbeers.eigenstart.nl
3. schifka.vuodatus.net
4. hannajaleijona.blogspot.com
5. adventkalender.punt.nl
6. poppenhuiskladblog.punt.nl
7. mustix.vuodatus.net
8. debbiestinytreasures.blogspot.com
9. pubdolls.blogspot.com
10. littleroomers.blogspot.com
11. theminifoodblog.blogspot.com
12. matxalen-miniaturasycasasdemuecas.blogspot.com
13. jasminasnoussiadventskalender.punt.nl
14. kurjenpolvi.blogspot.com
15. lastanzadigiuggiola.blogspot.com
16. aminhacasaemminiatura.blogs.sapo.pt
17. lissunnukkekoti.blogspot.com
18. a-miniature-life.blogspot.com
19. tiinanlinkkivinkit.blogspot.com
20. nasunnukkekoti.blogspot.com
21. miniaturebymoon.blogspot.com
22. tiina2005.vuodatus.net
23. villajuulia.blogspot.com
24. thebarbiequeue.blogspot.com/
25. linnanneito.blogspot.com

I am hoping you will find new cool mini sites you have not seen before from this list :).

And if you want to get the MTW Award next year, that is pretty easy:

1. create a popular mini site
2. add a MTW button there or link to the wiki from your blog posts.

See you in the party ladies! Time to celebrate the wiki and your beautiful mini sites :).

It is party time - #mtw1year

Mini treasures wiki is now one year old. :) I thank you for this first year and hope there will be many more. See how our friends in Flickr party for the first year and then check the main party page. Enjoy and have a good time! :) In the meanwhile I go and check what the final analytics results are - this is thrilling - who of you will get the first MTW Awards?

One day before #mtw1year party

This is getting exciting! Tomorrow we have the virtual party for our beloved Mini treasures wiki! Join us by arranging a party scene in your dollhouse/roombox/diorama. Add the photos to our Faceboo page, to our Flickr group or share a link here in comments, in Twitter or twitpic.com with a hashtag #mtw1year or to party page in the wiki itself: http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/mtw_one_year. Come and invite your friends as well, it will be so much fun to see how the wiki is celebrated. I guess this is the first global virtual miniature party ever - don't miss it!

Improved wiki editor

Just found out that the PBworks editor was improved, the content copied from Word works better now and there is option "save and ontinue". Read more

PS. To give the credit to those it belongs I am concepting "MTW Award" - the people bringing most traffic to our wiki will be featured on wiki's birthday. Are you one of them? :)

Analytics from the past month (Feb-Mar)

Someone may have wondered what on earth I did today - spamming the ones who order feeds by editing dozens of pages. I was adding Google Analytics codes - they need to be in every page and I have not find a way to include it in the side layout. The reason I want to get stats out of the wiki is of course the better I know the way you use it the better I can customize it for you.

So let´s check the statistics together again...

The growth from the previous month is 15.8% - not bad at all :). On average day we get 80 visitors who check 3 pages at the time. During the month we got 1617 unique visitors.

The top 5 pages by visitors are
1. main page
2. printables
3. projects
4. trash minis
5. diy

also character dolls, shops, museums, roomboxes and food are among the top ten landing pages.

The top 10 countries were
1. United States
2. Finland
3. United Kingdom
4. Germany
5. Netherlands
6. Canada
7. Spain
8. Australia
9. Greece
10. Italy

- what a surprise to see Greece there! This means that I need to create a page for them :).

The top 10 referring sites were
1. Google
2.(direct)
3. flickr.com
4. bing
5. nukkekoti.pbworks.com
6. facebook.com
7. schifka.vuodatus.net
8. twitterfeed and 9. twitter.com
10. yahoo

Nanna was among the ten top sites last time too, I think I need to ask an interview from her soonish. :)

When we remove the searches from the list also the following sites bring a lot of traffic: this blog, en.wikipedia.org, debbiestinytreasures.blogspot.com, hannajaleijona.blogspot.com and theminifoodblog.blogspot.com . Thank you so much for linking to the wiki :).

100th Facebook fan - Doreen

This week we got the 100th fan to our Facebook page - now we have 104 :). To celebrate the occasion I interviewed Doreen - here we go.


Hi Doreen - How does it feel to be the 100th Facebook fan of Mini treasures wiki? It feels great to be number 100 as it feels like I am part of a milestone. I am sure this number is going to grow.

Tell a little about yourself: who you are, where do you come from and what do you do? I am retired and live in a small resort town just south of Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada. I originally came from Toronto, Ontario but we do not like city living and prefer much quieter living.

Do you have any hobbies other than miniatures? The only other hobbies I have other than miniatures is reading and observing nature. We live on the river and love to watch the wildlife.

When and how did you start doing miniatures? I started miniatures about five years ago when my husband bought me my very first dollhouse for Christmas. Since I am retired, I can no longer afford to buy furniture and all the little things for the house so I have learned how to make them myself. I especially love Trash to Treasure projects as it gives me great satisfaction to make something from nothing. I also like to use dolls to create scenes with and to give life to the rooms.

What is your latest / next mini-project? I just finished my dollhouse today. It has taken me a long time because I do each room separtely like a roombox and I like to add a lot of detail to each room. I also change the house according to the season. I have done some projects inbetween like a burger stand and an ice-cream parlour.

How did you find Mini Treasures wiki and what is your favorite page in the wiki? What would you like to see in the wiki in the future? I do not know what I would like to see in the wiki in the future because I am still exploring it in the present.

Johanna found me and asked me to join. I was very pleased as I am an amateur and I need all the help I can get to create the miniatures that I love. So of course my favorite page is the DIY!

Thanks for the interview and congrats for your dollhouse!

a bithday is coming

Time goes fast - Mini treasures wiki will be one year old on 14th April and I want to celebrate the occasion with you. I invited the fans from Facebook and Twitter followers to take part and now I am inviting you too (microblogging comes before blogging as it takes less time to do but I am not forgetting you). Now tell me how we can arrange a virtual party. :)

In the wiki there is page for the party: http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/mtw_one_year where you can also suggest ways to celebrate.

Our wiki is premium now

It was a tough decision but I was pushed to do it: I bought a premium version for one year for Mini treasures wiki. This was the first time I paid for an Internet service and I was not that happy to do it. I am giving a lot of my free time for improving the wiki and I thought it should be enough. But it was not, now also my money is envolved...

But with the earlier free version of PBworks I could not do as much as I wanted.

E.g. any spammer could come and add links to our main page or sidebar. :( Linda, my right hand, told me that she could not do proper searches any more. And when I posted links to Facebook it refused to show the pictures like it used to do. :(

But now those problems are solved :).

With premium version I was also able to add a logo which is now shown in every page. :) If you click it you will be landing to the main page. And the most visible change for you: I was able to customize the colors. :)

Tell me if you have any problems with the new wiki!

And now something with small print:
If there are wiki lovers out there who want to help me in raising the money there are several options. You can buy stuff from our Cafe Press shop or buy books or other stuff from Amazon using the links in the wiki (e.g. from the books page). And as I am a miniaturists I wouldn´t mind if you decide to send something small for me, e.g. one of those mini treasures that are shown in our pool... In that case ask me to send my address as I don´t want to share that in public. A sponsorship deal is worth negotiating too.

But don´t get me wrong now: I am not pushing you to pay me (like PBworks kind of did to me): the wiki remains free of charge for readers and you can add links to your favorite sites and shops as you wish. Have fun there - I certainly do. :)f

Customizing your Firefox with MTW

Did you know that you can customize your Firefox? I did not until yesterday. I tried two different Personas but started to miss one with miniatures in it so I created "Mini treasures wiki Persona". If you want to use it just click the orange Wear this Persona button. Here's another one. I know some of you could make a really cool Persona for Mini treasures wiki, so go ahead and do it :). Then add a link to this blog entry or to wiki itself. :)

PS. Just of my curiosity I checked which browsers are used by MTW users. Green is Firefox, blue is Internet Explorer (IE), the smaller ones are Safari, Chrome, Opera and Mozilla. I am so happy with Firefox I have not tried other browsers.

Where do the wiki readers come from?

Studying this map shows you where in world there are Mini treasures wiki readers. A lot of green already :). Never been in so many countries myself but now I have created something that goes where I can´t go. :)

Mini treasures in Facebook

In the spring I created a Facebook group for Mini treasures wiki. Currently there are 16 people in it and there is not that much happening there. What I have learnt from other organizations in Facebook is that fan pages tend to be more active than the groups - mainly because the fan pages you will see on your own wall while group messages can be read only if you remember to visit the group - or if you will get email messages.

So this week I took the time and moved Mini treasures wiki to a new level by setting up a fan page for us as well. After just 2 days we have more members (fans) than we have in the group - wow!

So if you are using Facebook join our fan page to get updates about the wiki easily on your Facebook wall. :)

Ebay shops selling dollhouse miniatures

For a long time we in Mini treasures wiki have had a page for Etsy shops selling dollhouse miniatures. Now we are introducing also a page for
Ebay shops selling miniatures. If you are selling there, add your shop to that page.

How?

First you need an account (or open id) for the wiki - after that you can add any dollhouse miniature related links to the wiki. To get started see the wiki faq.

When you are promoting your miniatures in the wiki remember to promote back, here are the wiki buttons.

23 nights until the advent calendar starts!

My kids have already started counting days until they can open their advent calendars. Maybe I should do the same. There are still some windows available in the calendar, go and claim yours, it will be fun to see what you come up with. :)

I am promoting the calendar with pictures that I picked from Mini treasures Flickr group - we have 113 members and 935 pictures already - wow!

1. Gingerbread Pet Shop Detail-Roof, 2. Miniature Holiday Harvest Tree, dollhouse christmas tree ooak, 3. Gingerbread House Pendant, 4. Santa 1:12 Scale Miniature Doll, 5. Advent calendar, 6. TOYNBEE - angel, 7. Puesto Navideño, 8. dollhouse for a dollhouse rooms, 9. Christmas Decorating Underway at the Enchanted Cottage