A project I have been working on for quite some time was launched today. The site is a forum for business people to discuss there businesses, it is called www.BizSocial.com.
My target for this forum is to have 200 users by the end of next month. Please visit and sign up and post. www.bizsocial.com
Add comment August 16th, 2006
There are a few things I want to talk about.
ThemeTree.com
http://www.ThemeTree.com this directory has really taken off I have had a lot of submissions (380) since its launch a week ago so I have been spending a lot of time looking through the submissions and approving them. Money wise the site has paid for itself. I have got a sponsor banner for a year and also had a few featured submissions.
Sites bought
You may remember I mentioned that I bought a few sites the other week. I paid for both sites one sale went through fine the other I have paid the money but the database the guy sent was full of errors. So I had to go through and sort out all the errors which took 2 days solid. When I finally got the database online the site links were all wrong. I am still working on this and it is in joolma, if any of you know joolma let me know.
My predications for the 1st site are that it will take 1.5 years to pay back the cost of buying it. Â I will be put off buying a site again due to the problems I have had with the 2nd one I purchased. I have learned some lessons.
Add comment August 13th, 2006
ThemeTee.com the free directory was launched yesterday. It is my first general web directory project. Please add your site for free. So far I have had a load of submissions, it is going well.
Add comment August 1st, 2006
I have been doing loads recently; I have sold a ton of crap on ebay, bought two new books on making cash on the internet (I will review in a few weeks) and bought some sites. I have also been migrating all my sites from one server to another, that’s took a lot of time.I have also been trying to sell a site of mine www.fcforums.com and also a domain name www.themetree.com, if you want to buy them email me at adam@goaheadweb.co.uk .Â
I have bought two sites although I am waiting for the transactions to go through before I will talk about them. I have bought a few more domain names for future projects. I will be starting work on a new project soon, I will keep you updated.
Add comment July 26th, 2006
I have decided to close my hosting account with 34sp as I was paying out quite a bit per month £20-30($40-$60) and there hidden charges (such as £1 per month for smtp support per account) were horrible. For the last few month I have been running both accounts and slowly transfering my sites over.
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I use hostgator for my sites and I think they are great, I have the baby croc package ($9.95 or £5 per month) which means that I can host unlimited sites with good space and transfer limits (5gb space and 75gb transfer), I haven’t been hit with any hidden charges and the sites haven’t been down, there tech support is quite good. Too improve I think the live help people could do more complex server tasks.
If you do decide to sign up, please use my link/banner(below) as this pays me a commission and enter the coupon code â€Jury†to get the first months hosting for 1 cent.
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Add comment July 26th, 2006
We live in the high technology era and most businesses need a website to market their product and services. The days when a web page was just simple “brochure-ware†are long gone. Today a web site means more than just informing people what your services are and their prices. It reflects the image of your company, it speaks to its visitors about the company goals and achievements, it can play animation demonstrations about how products are made or how should they be used, offers general information and can do much more.Â
The first step to be done in making your web site a successful one is to brand it. If you look in a marketing book for the definition of “brand†you’ll see that it means a mixture of information about a service /a product/a company and it has to include a name, a logo and visual elements such as images or symbols in order to make it distinctive from the others on the market. So when branding your web site you have to be aware of the following:
If you think, create and brand your website carefully, the results of your efforts may appear sooner than you’ve expect them.
Add comment July 19th, 2006
Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo are no longer just simple names, they are valuable brands known by anybody who’s ever worked on a computer.Â
What made these businesses the huge successes they are today? First of all timing! They appeared on the market when needed. For example Amazon had been launched in 1995 when people where curious and anxious to have a virtual bookstore, available from their own homes anytime.
Then they have successfully branded their websites using different techniques. Back in 1995 eBay started its activity with the sale of a broken laser pointer. Today it’s the most well known online auction and shopping website. It has revolutionized the collectibles market because it brings together buyers and sellers from around the world. It is not only private individuals using eBay, due to the reputation of this brand, well known companies such as Apple sell their newest products (see Ipod) and offer services on eBay.
Yahoo, the most visited website on the Internet today with more than 400 million unique users, has become the success that it is because they understood and fulfilled client’s needs. They branded their site by applying different strategies (auto response messages, information in different areas, latest news, horoscopes) they have offered people with same interest the possibility of joining together to talk (Yahoo Groups). As James Bilefield, business development director at Yahoo UK once said, yahoo is “first and foremost a media company, selling audiences”.Â
Youtube.com for example has chosen a suggestive logo (“Broadcast yourselfâ€) along with an expressive image (a red tv). So when visitors of the site think of it, they have the image of a tv in mind.To successfully brand its web side Google has found another strategy: AdWords Select (an optimization strategy to bring web sites more visitors as potential clients). According to Business Week, March 2006, “Google didn’t make money until it started auctioning ads that appear alongside the search results. Advertising today accounts for 99% of the revenue of a company whose market capitalization now tops $100 billion”.Â
From every successful story of a company activating on Internet there are lessons to be learned and applied to your own website. Â
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Add comment July 9th, 2006
Well, I didn’t really want to write about this but I thought I might as well to help others avoid the same mistakes I did.
About a year ago I set up an online shop to sell wedding and hen night products. I built the site with oscommerce, bought some stock and promoted the site. I just couldn’t make very many sales (I made about 1 a month), so I decided to scrap it.
Here is why I think it failed
1. When I bought my stock I decided to buy only about 30 different items. I didn’t want to risk putting a lot of money into a new venture, I wanted to test the market to see if the products would sell. This had the negative of the shop looking small therefore losing confidence with my potential customers.
2. Low profit margin products – most products had a low value of between £2-£10. To make a decent profit would have meant selling a lot of items. I should have stocked some more expensive items such as jewellery.
3. Only accepting the paypal payment method. A lot of people don’t have a paypal account like my granddad for example. Those with PayPal use ebay quite heavily to buy goods.
2 comments June 12th, 2006
Yahoo and ebay team up to take on Google. This is a stupid strategy, having ads and yahoo search on eBay will ruin it because the beauty of eBay is it’s just a auction site no ads, no confusion, no bullshit. Short term this will gain both companies a bit of cash but long term it will damage them.
Add comment May 26th, 2006
I just found out about this site called adbrite.com, it’s a way for advertising sellers and buyers to meet up and do deals. It’s different from adsense in the way that you can sell per period of time for a link rather than by how many clicks. I might give it a go, although I am unsure on where I stand if I have both adsense and adbrite on the same site. I searched the forums and there are a lot of yes and no answers. Click the banner below to visit adbrites website.
Add comment May 25th, 2006
