Myself, Caelen and Jason went to an informal meeting last night of some local online business people, where we all talked through our products and pricing plans and gave each other some advice on how we might change and hopefully improve them.
It was great to meet:
James from Piehole
Eoghan from Contrast
Helen from Shop 4 Training
Shane from the Castleknock Print Blog
Ali from FishPond
We’re looking forward to continuing to discuss some of the ideas that cropped up last night, and hopefully we’ll see all of the above and some more of you at the next one. More details soon…
Caelen and James Kennedy of Piehole the voiceover directory are getting together to talk about sales, marketing and pricing on Wednesday after work in Oleysa’s Wine Bar on Exchequer Street (between Grafton Street and George’s Street) and would love you to come along too. It’s completely informal, and there will be some drinking, but the main purpose is to talk about how to decide what your price points should be for your products, and how to differentiate them for sales and marketing purposes.
If you’re free on Wednesday evening, drop in and say hi and add your 2 cent to the discussion.
What: Talking about pricing, drinking beer and wine.
Where: Oleysa’s Wine Bar, Exchequer Street, Dublin 2 [Google Map]
When: 6pm, Wednesday, June 24th.
BizCamp Belfast is a user-generated business unconference for entrepreneurs, innovators and startups to share and learn in an open environment. It's taking place on the 16th May 2009 at the The Black Box, Belfast.
- Finding your niche
- Funding
- Development
- Data sourcing and cleaning
- Marketing & Sales
Avoiding The Google Sandbox from RevaHealth.com on Vimeo.
When we launched RevaHealth.com, like most online businesses, it was critical for us to rank well in Google. So we did all the normal SEO work: we ticked the onpage boxes, we secured some good quality links (including some from the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail) and we targeted long tail keywords that didn’t have much competition.
- Don’t register your domain through a proxy. There are loads of services out there that can hide your personal details when registering a domain. While this at first seems like a harmless thing to do, it means that when Google looks at your domain registration information, (and yes, it does do this) it can tell it was registered by proxy. The problem with this is that loads of web spammers register their domains through proxies. Unfortunately, you get lumped in with them and it takes you much longer to get out of the sandbox.
- Register your domain early. Get your website online as early as possible with 6-10 pages of content and a couple of inbound links. If you are thinking of starting a business, get it done today. Everyday its up there is a day less you have to spend in the sandbox when your business eventually goes live.
- Get someone else to buy your domain. Sandboxing is something that doesn’t seem to affect major companies. When someone like Procter and Gamble buys a new domain they don’t seem to get sandboxed. It is speculated that this is because Google looks at the domain registration information and sees that P&G doesn’t create spammy sites. Therefore, any domains that P&G create automatically have a degree of trust associated with them. If you’ve never registered a domain or built a trusted site, then Google have no inherent trust in you. However, what you can do, is get someone you know who has set up trusted domains, (and no spammy ones) to register your domain under their name. That way you should minimise the impact of the sandbox. Just make sure you trust them!
- Buy a domain with content. Buy a domain that is already out of the Google Sandbox, but don’t transfer the domain registration information immediately. Next, slowly and gradually replace the existing content on the domain with your own content and finally, months later, transfer the registration information. It is really important here that you check all of the inbound links to the domain, to make sure no spammers link to it. Note: this tactic is risky and has been known to fail, with all Page Rank erased and the domain sandboxed as if it were brand new .
Phil, Owen and I headed to the First Wednesday Club last night at the Mint Bar. Congrats to Karina Heavey of the 121 Marketing Network for setting it all up and for making it such a great event. Here are some of the people we spoke to:
Fiona D’Arcy- Head of Communications and Marketing at Silicon and Software Systems (S3), a company that provides next generation products and services to consumers.
Bertrand Raoult- Sales and Marketing Executive.
Jen Keane- Senior Web Developer at Cahill May Roberts, pharmaceutical distribution and wholesaling.
Peter Cullen- CEO of Interleado, internet marketing and search engine optimisation site.
David Jones- Hoping to breath some life into the Irish economy through his new venture For Paddy’s Sake- selling Irish affiliated merchandise to the diaspora worldwide.
Joe Newell- CFO of Ticket Text, a company that passes on savings to concert-goers by delivering tickets directly to their mobile phones.
Lorcan O hUallachain- Founder of Only Brilliant.
Fred Caballero-Channelship, web design and internet marketing agency.
We hope to meet more people at the next First Wedneday Club, which will be May 6th.
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