Thanks for your interest in becoming a part of our site. Before hitting that send button, please take a minute to review our criteria for inclusion.

In the years we've been running Chateau Bizarre, the number of webshops has exploded. We've been glutted with dreadfalls, beaded jewelry, dark dolls, Emily Strange descendants, and various proficiencies in revamped clothing, so we're constantly on the lookout for things our readers have never seen before. Each shop we review gets some time at the top of our front page, so the sites we list have to be outstanding. Catalogs that are skimpy, derivative, or poorly designed are going to get pushed to the back of the line by merchants with fun layouts and striking merchandise. Two messily-stitched wallets do not count as a store, let alone innovative street fashion. Let's move the aesthetic forward, people.

NOTE: We have gotten so overrun by Leg Avenue, Demonia, Shirley of Hollywood, and Alchemy Gothic that we no longer accept sites that feature just these brands and nothing else.

OUR CRITERIA:

FASHION, DESIGN, AND ART ONLY!

We do not list construction tools, vacation packages, department store brands, or other mundania. If you can find it in the mall, we don't want it. Please look at the tags to get an idea of what we list.

NO PORTFOLIO/SHOWROOM SITES.

Our readers must be able to place an order for the items on your site, not just look at pretty things with no way to buy them. Even if you don't have a shopping cart, "contact for direct purchasing information" will suffice - although the lack of a shopping cart means you'd better be easy to contact.

NO WHOLESALE-ONLY SITES.

We want catalogs that can be accessed by all our readers, not just the ones with resale licenses or login codes. Also you must be selling items that can be bought straight from your site, not redirected to a stockist. And it bears repeating: we are not a shop, we are a blog. We are not interested in doing wholesale business with people who have obviously not read this paragraph.

DECENT AMOUNT OF STUFF.

• Sites that have only three or four items for sale have to have something really amazing to make up for a tiny stock. This goes double when the merch is "OOAK" or "reconstructed from vintage finds."
• Sites that look like they've got categories full of merchandise but hit us with a lot of "No products in this category" pages will be deemed too annoying to review.

NO FUR.

We do not promote the selling of fur, especially now that the glam revival is making fur trim quite popular. (This includes "faux" fur, which may not be as fake as we're led to believe.) While some of the sites we list may have fur items for sale, we don't highlight them in our reviews.

NO POST-70'S PORN.

We do have a section for kitschy retro porn sites that charge membership fees, but anything eighties and on, no.

NO INTANGIBLES.

We only list physical goods - that means, no MP3's, no webdesign, no over-the-net tarot readings, or other services. Basically, nothing that can't be packed in a box and shipped.

A NOTE ON SECONDHAND.

Professionals selling antiques or vintage clothing are welcome to submit their sites. Stuff that came out of your garage, no.

PHOTOGRAPHS.

• We need one picture of your merchandise we can use alongside your review. If your photos trigger warnings when right-clicked, submitting your site means you consent to our going ahead and taking them for publication. If your site shows the merch in Flash, send us a few .jpgs. Exceptions may be made for adult stores who don't have anything that can be shown to our audience at large - if so, send us a small image of your logo.
• We don't accept text-only catalogs - we can't review what we can't see.
• We must see actual photographs of merchandise, no movie stills or sketches.
• Items have to be photographed with professionalism in mind - no blurred shots, no hands holding up the item, nothing that looks like a badly photographed auction.
• No crappy pixellated catalog scans, please.
• Images have to be hosted on your site - no Yahoo or Flickr galleries.
• Catalogs where it's obvious other people's images are being used without their permission are immediately disqualified from consideration.
• Yes, we know, there are shops in our database that don't have pictures. This is from the days of our weekly updates, when we could sneak them in along with five or six other illustrated shops. We can't do this now that we've gone daily. See "grandfathered" shops below.

WEBHOSTING & DESIGN

• Site design must work in multiple browsers. We use Mozilla Firefox, so keep that in mind if you've designed only for IE.
• We prefer individual domains, so sites that have prominent webhosting ads or dreadful popups really need to have outstanding merch to make up for it - and Google AdWords should not be the first thing that we see when clicking into your site. Sites that have annoying graphics butting into the catalog and voiceovers telling us we've "won" something are immediately disqualified.
• Sites that are too hard to navigate will not be inflicted upon our readership.
• If you're a retailer and the brands you carry are already well-covered in our directory, your site has to have a lot of personality to get listed. We don't like sites that are sterile - no keywordy domain names or Googley layouts that look like squatter sites. Make it YOURS.

EBAY SELLERS ARE ACCEPTED! BUT READ ON:

• If a merchant is using eBay as their primary storefront, the eBay address is listed. If a merchant has their own domain and they're using eBay for getting the word out about the webstore, or selling off old stock, it's folded into the listing with a separate eBay link.
• Merchants who sell their wares through auctions have to be making everything themselves, carry brand-new stock, or sell vintage clothing. You also have to have a significant amount of merch available for sale - you don't have to have an official eBay store, but we don't want our readers to hit empty pages when they click your link.
• We don't list sellers with excessive amounts of bad feedback.
• We do not list individual eBay auctions.

NO CAFE PRESS SHOPS.

We don't list Cafe Press shops, because anybody can have one, and since most of the money goes to them, doesn't really qualify as a small business merchant.

NO LIVEJOURNAL STORES.

Selling through LiveJournal is a nice, laid-back way to get your work out, but it's amateur. However, merchants who are selling through LJ are welcome to post in the Chateau's community.

A NOTE ON RUBYLANE.COM/ETSY.COM

Both RubyLane and Etsy have been given one big listing on the Chateau, so we don't list individual stores from these sites. The reasons why are:

• Our directory space is prioritized for people who have taken the time and effort to acquire their own domains, design them well, and manage their own shopping carts. Ebay stores are an exception because the vintage and indie boutiques are not handpicked into a site specially designed for this kind of merchandise, and it's easy for them to get lost in the bazillions of stores out there.
• We've found that once one person has been listed, we start getting requests from other merchants and if we accommodated them all, we'd just be duplicating Etsy's directory, and that's not really serving our readers.

However, RubyLane and Etsy merchants are free to post stuff from their individual stores in our LiveJournal community. :)

CATEGORIZATION

Shops are tagged with the most direct descriptions of their designs to avoid keyword spamming and muddying the categories. Ex.: Victorian gowns can be quite gothic, but if there aren't any designs that have the distinct Morticia stylings of bell sleeves or cobweb lace, then this isn't a gothic shop. Long flowing medieval dresses could be bridal, but unless there are photographs of finished designs, "these can be ordered in white" doesn't cut it. And "punk-inspired" does not automatically mean it's punk.

BUT! BUT! YOU ALREADY LISTED "_____________."

Sites that have broken any of the aforementioned rules are considered "grandfathered." Live with it.

EDITING YOUR REVIEW

We are happy to take a look at your site if you've made drastic changes in your catalog and need to update an outdated listing. Drop a line, if so.

WHEN SUBMITTING YOUR SITE:

• Place the name of your store in the subject line.
• Tell us who you are, what you're selling, whatever you feel necessary to present your wares. We aren't some huge, impersonal entity you need to impress with fancy marketing speak or any crap like that - step up and give us your spiel! : )
• Personalized, chatty little notes are going to get a lot more attention than boring generic messages where the shop owner didn't even bother to write their name at the bottom.
• Don't forget to include the link to your shop! (Yes, people have done this.)
• If you want to offer our readers a discount or free gift or other promotional goodie that doesn't have an expiration date, let us know and we'll add the Chateau Specials tag to your listing.
• Sites will be reviewed on a first-come, first serve basis. If we've accepted your site for a listing, we'll let you know via email on the day it's posted.
• If your store doesn't appear on our site, that means one of two things: 1) We haven't gotten a chance to review it yet. Please be patient, because it can take time. Or, 2) it didn't fit our criteria.
• If you're just suggesting a shop you like(meaning, you're not the owner), please include your name and website address so we can credit you.
• The absolute best way you can thank us for all the traffic we're about to drive to your shop is to put us on your links page. Reciprocal linking is not mandatory to get on our site, but we really appreciate it.
• If you're getting an expiration error message, that means you're leaving the window open too long. We suggest typing up your spiel offline and then cutting and pasting into the email box when you're ready to go.