Thanks to your support BME has surpassed the voting threshold needed to be considered for the small business grant!

It will be a while before we know if we won the grant, but we just wanted to extend a huge thank-you to everyone who voted.  There are still 2 days left, and more votes won’t hurt, so if you haven’t yet taken a moment to vote for BME, you can do so by simply visiting www.missionsmallbusiness.com.  On the bottom right you’ll see a button labeled “Log in & Support”.  The site will link to your facebook, so you don’t need to create a profile of any kind.  Once you’ve signed in, search for “BME” and click the “VOTE” button for BME.com.  That’s it!

So again, from all of us here at BME, thank you so much for your continued support.

p.s. The t-shirts from the fundraiser for Ari are being printed right now and should be back from the printers in the first week of July.  So expect to see them in your mailbox sometime after that.

As many of you know, BME is a small business.  With only 5 employees, BME still manages to be the world’s largest online tattoo, piercing and body modification community, historical archive and educational resource.  While there have been some changes over the years, most notably the gallery redesign, and the upgrades to IAM, not to mention staff changes, BME is still up and running.  For those that have been paying attention to Rachel’s IAM page, you’ll recall that the site redesign took about 3 years longer than was predicted, and cost a lot more than was estimated.  We’ve since gotten rid of the company that was screwing us over and brought in a new programmer that has been working day and night to address as many issues as possible.  Now with us having such a small staff, it’s obviously a lot harder for us to keep up with the changes that you’ve come to expect from your social networking sites. Now if BME were to receive a large sum of cash, we’d be able to bring in more programmers and get the features that you want to you a lot sooner.

So what can you do to help?  Well, we’re not asking for your money, but we are asking you to support us as we’ve applied for a small business grant.  Showing your support is extremely simple.

First, visit www.missionsmallbusiness.com.  On the bottom right you’ll see a button labeled “Log in & Support”.  The site will link to your facebook, so you don’t need to create a profile of any kind.  Once you’ve signed in, search for “BME” and click the “VOTE” button for BME.com.  That’s it!

We need at least 250 votes to be in consideration for the grant, so be sure to ask your friends to vote as well.  The more votes we get, the better our chances of winning.  If BME receives the grant, you can expect a lot of the changes that we’ve been working on happening considerably faster.  So put this on your IAM pages, your Facebook wall, and your Twitter feeds!  Get the word out, and help support BME!  Voting ends June 30th, so vote today!