Now contrary to what everyone else in our little niche market does (and what many in most niche markets do, for good reason), we prefer to do as much of the ‘mission critical’ components as possible in house as opposed to outsourcing those to 3rd parties — from our shopping cart & hosting our own basic site search, to the building out of our affiliate program and even this blog, to using our own proprietary customer service platform, etc.

Someone much wiser than all of us once said that you can either be the very best at one thing, or you can choose to be average at everything. So in order for us to be the best in our niche market, we need to seek out others whom are best in their respective field and work with them when it makes sense, rather than spending the time to build something not half as good they have done. In the end this will allow us to refocus that energy on what we are good at — selling fake poop. And with the new architecture changes we alluded to, plugging in widgets, among other things, is easier than ever.

One week ago today we replaced our own antiquated product ratings, which had fallen completely off the back burner, in exchange for a transparent widget from js-kit. Their product simply kicks ass, is very intuitive, and as we mentioned above, transparent. If you would like to see a live demonstration in real-time, rate this post from 1-5 below, or go to any product page on our site.

That all said, over the last 7 days you (well, a very tiny portion of you) have voted on hundreds of different products. And the top 3 rated products as of today are…..drum roll…

1) Rubber chicken (4.43)
2) Shock chewing gum (4.29)
3) Control freak keychain TV remote (4.14)

To be continued…