Pure Play

lynx on 31st jan 09

A timely article on the Wall St Journal site which revisits the never ending debate on Free V Paid for businesses on the internet. Chris Anderson's article linked here.

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Pirate copies of U2's video for "Get Your Boots On" are popping up around the interweb, and being pulled down as quickly. This one works for the moment.

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Looking for people information? Pipl digs around the deep web - the databases which google and others do not usually access. Go dig up data on that important person here.

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There are rumours of bizcamps in Ennis, Waterford and Belfast to compliment the ones scheduled for Dublin (43 registered so far) and Limerick. Check it all out here. 

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keith

dbTwang Facebook ads metrics @29th January 2009

Currently:

• 304,574 impressions across 8 adverts
• 154 click throughs (the ads range from .08 of a percent to .02 of a percent click throughs)
• e32.72 spent to date
• 39 of those visitors signed up to be notified (25% )
• Therefore each of those has cost us e.83

Because we are running 4 variants of the ad wording yet only have a single landing page we are not able to track the success of each. In an ideal situation you would have a landing page tailored for each advert - matching the key messages and vibe from each advert.

That should improve the conversion rate overall and it would also allow you to see which is the most successful.

Previous posts here and here.

keith

Update

Based on a visitors comments (thanks Georgie) I have broken out one of the adverts into more defined segments. It had been running in UK for all Male & Females across all age ranges who were interested in guitars.

I have now implemented an age and gender split to see if there are significant differences across those groups. Only remaining relevant sub division would be by location. FYI here are the numbers in each segment.

• 18-25, Male: 31,260 in audience
• 26-35, Male: 10,020 in audience
• 36-45, Male: 3,080 in audience
• 45-65, Male: 1,460 in audience

• 18-25, Female: 9,120 in audience
• 26-35, Female: 2,960 in audience
• 36-45, Female: 980 in audience
• 45-65, Female: 420 in audience

If this produces a result (ie shows material differences in the click through rate across segments I will

1. Implement the split on other wording variations
2. Pull this ad in lower performing CTR segments
3. Consider new and differently worded ads for those lower segments

I am a late adopter - and even so look at this mess

The places where I have a presence on a network of some kind

• Blogging - for me and dbTwang and personal use
• Twittering - for me at present
• Youtube - less said the better
• Facebook - almost dormant
• Linkedin - chugging away
• IGOPeople - dip in and out for me and yet to activate dbTwang
• Blip.fm - for pleasure
• bizcamp.ie - F~$k the recession
• huddle.net - for bizcamp crew
• basecamphq - client for me, website UI for dbTwang, IIA board and working groups
• yammer - for dbTwang internals
• flickr - sporadic
• pix.ie - for personal use
• irishbusinesswomen.com - for me and almost never these days

There is a trace of me in some of those places and a stronger imprint in others. Each (with a couple of exceptions) serves a purpose. Most cannot be replaced by one of the others.

This is not a complaint, just an observation. And thank God for cookies because I have a different and very random password for each one.

keith

While the social partners fiddle, entrepreneurs get on with it

More great news on the fundraising side - Dublin based OfficeMetrics announced today that they have closed a €1m round. Link to Silicon Republic story.

Started by Jonathan Mulligan and Damien O'Brien they only went live in May 2008 and already have 50,000 members across 89 countries. At €10 per user per month on the professional version there is a nice revenue stream here somewhere.

What do they offer? A way of measuring productivity amongst office workers and I am guessing the R word is probably helping their sales pitch. No thanks though guys - I will pace myself for the moment :-)

keith

In Guinness Storehouse tomorrow? Say hello

I will be at the IIA Net Imperative Dublin Roadshow for a couple of hours tomorrow - arriving in time to hear Alan O'Rourke talk about:
- How to engage a two-way conversation
- How to ensure the ultimate user experience

then to a meeting with a potential client, off to buy an armful of guitar magazines in Easons for research which Fintan is doing.

Followed by a 3pm meeting with the chairs of each of the IIA working groups and finally IIA board meeting at 5pm. Train at 8pm from Heuston.

keith

Business blogging - you are asked for your opinion

I am wayyy late on this - the Social Media Working Group in the IIA is running a very short online survey for entrepreneurs who blog. From the blog of Brendan Hughes (the chair)

The business bloggers survey has been collecting responses for a couple of weeks now and we have had several dozen responses so far. Some interesting results include:

1. 85% of respondants use blogs to present a more human face to their business, with less than half seeing it as a means to get feedback from their customers on products and services.
2. 70% of business bloggers judge the success of their blogging activities on positive customer feedback with just on 1 in 5 expecting actual sales to come from their blog.
3. 90% of blogs are targetted at potential clients and customers, however other bloggers and journalists are also important audiences for business blogs.

keith

[disclaimer - I am on the board of the IIA]

IGOPeople - a network for normals

The Tuesday Push is back and it leads with IGOPeople.

This one has been growing on me slowly at a time when I am trying to incorporate a number of social and business networks into my work routines.

I use the word normals in the sense of neither techie nor youth - the two markets who usually make up the majority of members in social networks. Neither are excluded from IGOPeople - the difference is that it is built with normal internet users and businesses in mind.

It is inhabited by a large number of individuals who congregate around groups and organisations (businesses) of interest to or relevance to them. You can choose to follow the updates from any of these and participate in discussions across the service.

For businesses who are daunted by the abundance of places where feedback and discussion of your products, services or brands can happen this is an easy to set up place to bring it altogether.

Give it a try.

keith

Cork Business cracks deal with Dopplr

MAXroam, the cut your mobile roaming product from Cork dynamo Pat Phelan and his team have announced a deal to sell their product/service into the Dopplr userbase.

(thanks to Bernie for the shot)

And guess what - you can do the same for your business. Cubic Telecom (the business behind MAXroam) offers a whitelabel mobile offering. From their press release:

The company offers a 100% white label platform where MVNOs can customize everything as their own, including having their own branding of SIMs and web portal, plus customized audio prompts and short-codes.

MVNOs can set up multiple sub-distributors, each with their own discrete pricing, and customization, through Cubic's innovative new offering.

keith

More on Facebook ads and dbtwang, visuals

The top three adverts by click through rate are:

I wrote the middle one, Fintan the other two. For those of you who want more detail here is a scrape of the Ad Manager:

On the landing page change here is the old and new one side by side:

 

The new one is less cluttered, incorporates elements of our emerging visual identity and gets to the point. Much better, we think.

keith

Quick post on how dbTwang.com Facebooks ads are working

Been running Facebooks ads for dbTwang.com for 2 weeks now.

Experimenting with a variety of wording across 3 regions (Ireland, UK, US).

Was a couple of days late with Analytics - screwed up the code on the Confirmation page (which they see after giving us their email address).

In Summary

• 113,000 impressions across 11 adverts
• 71 click throughs (the ads range from .11 of a percent to .02 of a percent click throughs)
• e13.28 spent to date
• 36% of facebook visitors to dbTwang sign up
• Therefore each of those has cost us e1.92.

That is too expensive but we can live with it at low volumes. The following variables need tweaking:

1. The landing page (www.dbtwang.com) has be amended (Wed evening) and simplified to match the language of the newer ads. We need to see how that affects the sign up rate.
2. Lower our Max bid (although the ones which were running at .10c are now flagged as "Bid Too Low"

There are also variables which have not kicked in yet. Which are:

• How many of the email subscribers subsequently join the closed beta.
• How many of those continue to participate.
• How many of those become paying subscribers.

The answers to the 3 above not possible to answer for the moment.

Finally out of interest. The source of the last 22 signups (using the relatively new Advanced Segments functionality in Analytics)

11 Facebook.com
 5  Direct
 3  Google
 2  dbTwang Blog
 1  KenMc.com

keith

BizCamp, F*** The Recession. 7th March 2009, Dublin.

Its about business. It's a

It's not about technology.

Important to be clear about these things :-)

Digital Hub, Dublin. 7th March.

More: http://www.bizcamp.ie/about/

(Just up, no registration yet, give us a day or two to get it sorted)

keith

lynx on wednesday 21st jan 09

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Stamp out Social Media "experts" says Michael Pinto, wisely disabling comments at the same time. His post is here

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Inter Trade Ireland run a Private Equity Conference each year and it is coming up on 5th March with a fee of approx e237 for attendance. Their site is here

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James Kendrick loves the predictive intelligence which the Palm Pre appears to bring to the party. Read more in his post

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Design Pepper, a US based design business, are running a competition with a $700 blog makeover as the prize. Leave a comment here

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Focused text with no waste is key to a successful site and conversions and Jason Fried has put up a post on their revision of the Highrise pitch page. See the 37 Signals blog here

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lynx on Tuesday 20th jan 09

Train your iPhone to learn spelling. Link

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According to Ted Dziuba corporate blogs are for page rank, not engagement. Link

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More freemium business model wisdom from Andrew Chen. Link

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On the broadband front Damien flags a court battle looming in between Eircom and Comreg. Link

..while Maggie Bowen reports on the crapiness of the Three Dongle as used in Donegal. Link

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Stats on how many adults use social networks, and why, from ReadWriteWeb. Link

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Editors note: The Lynx will be regular, but are not expected daily

Save me from myself.......

If I was the newly launched videoblogger NiallH I would have a proper title on this post. But I am not so you are stuck with that.

This is first in what I hope will be a regular run of video clips which I will use to help communicate the story of dbTwang. This has been brewing since late last year when I became aware of the subtle changes in my browsing - I was consuming more and more video and am starting to demand, or at least expect it.

That coincided with a need to extend the range of media being used for the dbTwang marketing and also with said NiallH starting his and urging lesser mortals to do the same :-)

Embarrassed to say I took over 50 takes (some of them v.short) to get to this - I could not stand watching myself in any of them. I am guessing it gets easier from here on.

keith

Irish Blog Awards - nominated blogs are listed

Over at the Blog awards Damien has released the listing of nominations which will now go on to be judged. Over 600 blogs and 70 judges so numbers are high.

I was nominated in the business blogs category - to my surprise as I don't rate myself against some of the better business blogs which I enjoy reading. Thanks to whoever did that!

Here is the listing in that category:

Best Blog of a Business - Sponsored by RedCardinal.ie

Argolon: http://argolon.com
Bobby Buckley Gardens: http://bbgardens.ie/blog
Beautifuljobs.ie: http://beautifuljobs.ie/articles
Denise Cox’s Blog: http://newsweaver.co.uk/emailnewsletters
Ice Cream Ireland: http://icecreamireland.com
No More Art Notepad: http://nomoreart.co.uk/notepad
Moore Groups Blog: http://mooregroup.wordpress.com
Declan Shalvey: http://dshalv.blogspot.com
Cully And Sully: http://cullyandsully.com/news
The Cycling Blog: http://worldwidecyclesblog.com
Tast.ie:: http://tast.ie
Weddingdates.ie: http://weddingdates.ie/blog
IIA Blog: http://blog.iia.ie
Curious Wines: http://curiouswines.ie
Limerick Business Blog: http://onesolution.ie/blog
Nice Day Designs: http://nicedaydesigns-ruth.blogspot.com
Echolibre Blog: http://blog.echolibre.com
Ifoods.tv: http://ifoods.tv/blog
Pure Play: http://bohanna.typepad.com/pureplay
Developing Ewrite: http://ewritecork.com/blog
Robin Blandford: http://bytesurgery.com/blog
Krishna De: http://krishnade.com/blog
Peter Donegan Landscaping Weblog: http://blog.doneganlandscaping.com
Keith Malone Wedding Films: http://blog.keithmalone.ie
Sabrina Dent: http://sabrinadent.com
Security Watch: http://bhconsulting.ie/securitywatch
Argus Car Hire: http://blog.arguscarhire.com
Contrast | The Blog: http://contrast.ie/blog
The No Nonsense Blog: http://blog.nononsense.ie
Puddleducks Blog: http://blog.puddleducks.ie
Find a Conference Venue Blog: http://ciarafeely.wordpress.com/
Blacknight Blog: http://blog.blacknight.com
Brightspark Consulting Dublin: http://brightspark-consulting.com/blog
Weeno Blog: http://weeno.ie/blog
Cybercom: http://cybercom.ie

I am looking forward to reading the ones which are new to me and I hope you enjoy the passion and expertise which will be evident from each and every one of them.

keith

Thing is, I've been a good boy and a bad boy

Good Boy

For the first time in a couple of months I've spent money on software. Things - a low level project management tool (or high level task list) is one that myself and Fintan (he being co-founder of dbTwang) have been using for 4 months or thereabouts. It is a combination desktop client and iPhone app.
Yesterday I purchased a license for it.

Bay Boy

It costs euro40 for a single license and euro60 for a family. Myself and Fintan are close (as good friends and co-founders always are) but technically we are not a family. Nevertheless I purchased a family pack and we are both working from that.

Try Things out - it is well designed and executed.

keith

What to know just what the point of twitter is for business?

Woot

In the US Woot do daily discounted offers and they have been using Twitter as a communications channel since early 2007. Their strategy and approach are documented in the casestudy linked here (you can only access it until January 22nd, this is part of Marketing Sherpa's conversion process, time limited content which is then archived behind the subscription wall)

Niall Harbison
Meanwhile in Ireland Niall Harbison (seen most recently in a full page Sunday spread) has come up with a great way for some businesses to use twitter - very different from the Woot Way.

Enjoy both of them

keith

Its a giveaway, IP protection my ****

Go learn from a master. Damien Mulley is giving you the chance to receive the backup notes he uses when presenting on a topic which few people are better at - online marketing. I have just received a copy and I will be working my way through it to improve my skill set in this space.

If you are interested head over to this post on his corporate blog :-)

thanks for the ongoing inspiration Damien.

keith

User Interface Design

dbTwang
As covered in a couple of twitters on the day myself and Fintan had a day with Des Traynor in Contrast last Wednesday to start the design process for V1.0 of the dbTwang.com service.

It was intense for us, not least because the questions from Des forced us to get specific on a couple of high level ideas which we had not nailed down. We identified the key target audiences for the service and then brainstormed around their needs which the service would address.

The next step was identifying exactly how the service would be used to address those needs and pinning down the key areas/screens which would communicate this to users.

Des then took those key screens and sketched out wire frames of each of them on the whiteboard.

All of that will lead to an Application Architecture Schemata and after a couple of iterations we will finalise that and move onto our graphic design.
Should say here that the Schema will be shared with our developers before finalisation so any potential issues at build stage can be ironed out and resolved while we are in wireframe mode.

Our graphic design is being done by Matt Dempsey. I picked him up from a twitter post by Des and added him to the list which was being considered by Fintan. He liked Matt's work and opted for him (Fintan has a graphic design background so that was firmly in his hands, budgetary considerations aside).

Bugbase
For those of you into UI design the developers of Bugbase have just started a project with IDEO to redesign it and they have offered to share the process on their blogs.
Thanks to Fred Wilson for the nod on that.

keith

Understanding Digital Marketing

Calvin Jones (one of the co-authors) dropped me an email before Christmas and asked if I would like to review his new book. [Image links to Amazon.co.uk store, not an affiliate link]

Always an honour to be asked to do a review so yes was my quick response and I have it in my reading at present pile. I am about a third of the way through it and enjoying it so far.

It is one of a number of streams stimulating me as I get my head around the marketing of dbTwang.com.

Full review to follow.

keith

2009 conference listing

From the blog of Andrew Chen (I added him to my feeds after a couple of great posts on the freemium model) comes a listing of events which Irish tech startups might be interested in. If your favourite one is missing leave him a comment and get it added!

Full list here.

keith

Beware - jumpstart.com

Here's a tip for anyone thinking about subscribing to jumpstart.com (an interesting play environment for kids).

Their membership cancellation is phone based;
To cancel your membership, please call us Monday through Friday, 7:00 am-7:00 pm PST, 800.545.7677 or 310.533.3402.

This thinking is backward, obstructive and insulting - both to customers based in the US and also to overseas subscribers. I have heard discussions that this reduces churn but it will also create badwill in the community. To which this post will contribute.

keith

How to choose a chart type - the dummies guide

Thanks to my brother for this:

No matter what media you are working in charts come into play regularly as a strong way of visually communicating complex information. This may make it easier to decide which one to work with.

keith

[Image links to the flickr account of labnol who prepared this.]

Waterford Open Coffee Tomorrow, looks like an interesting speaker!

From Tom Doherty:

OCC meeting tomorrow (Friday) taking place at Arclabs between 9.30 - 11am. Coffee available at the Canteen between 9am - 9.30am

John Hayes is our guest speaker. Here is what he has to say about his talk tomorrow.

LOCAL INDEPENDENT BUSINESS OWNER DISCOVERS ‘GRUMPY’ MARKETING GENIUS THAT REVOLUTIONIZES HIS BUSINESS AND NOW WANTS OTHER ENTREPRENEURS TO EXPERIENCE SIMILAR SUCCESS.

Back in 2005 John Hayes sold his one third share of a €3.5 million annual turnover business he had spent 17 years building. Within a week of the sale, he had purchased the Irish Territory rights for a UK based Telemarketing Franchise.

Shortly after that, he ‘discovered’ the American Entrepreneur Dan Kennedy through a book he ordered from  Amazon.com and the rest as they say is history.

Find out why John’s discovery has been such an enormous benefit and profit to him and more importantly how you can ‘tap into’ the same resource.

Visit Open Coffee Club Waterford - an International Network at: http://occwaterford.ning.com

keith

Move sharpish to nominate your favorite blogs

Way behind on this one - the closing date for the Irish Blog Award nominations is the 14th so zip over there and spend a moment or two acknowledging the people whose content you read day in and day out and who are special enough to be included.

Just on the way now :-)

keith

e1.25M of good news on the Irish fundraising front

Hot on the trail of ifoods.tv announcement yesterday I received an email this morning from Caelen King in Revahealth.com (Caelen has a newbay and Baltimore background according to his Linkedin profile). Extracts from their press release:

They announced today a e1.25 million round, led by Mianach Venture Capital and supported by Enterprise Ireland.

What are they going to do with it?
RevaHealth.com will use the €1.25 million to continue the expansion of its health clinic search engine. Having originally focused on niche healthcare markets, RevaHealth.com is now expanding into wider local and national healthcare markets and plans to move into the Far Eastern and American markets later in 2009.

What is Revahealth?
RevaHealth.com is a search engine that helps users find and compare health clinics worldwide. Founded in 2006, it currently stores information on over 60,000 clinics in the UK, Ireland and 50 other countries worldwide. RevaHealth.com helps people take control of their healthcare choices and find the most suitable clinic and treatment for their needs.

Well done to Caelen and all in Revahealth - great to see that level of investment and ambition in Ireland.

keith

Run Advice Through Filters

For any entrepreneur one of the many challenges is balancing the need to be open to advice with an inner belief and drive which is what makes any business successful.

Of assistance is some understanding of the experience of the person giving advice to you - all advice is grounded to some extent on their personal experience and this colors their perception of the worlds. As it does for everyone.

Applying a filter to advice received helps you to understand how it should inform you.

keith

ifoods.tv announce successful investment round

For reasons which Niall explains in his blog post ifoods.tv delayed their announcement of a successful October 2008 funding round until today.

400k banked and the possibility of a further 200k has allowed them to put additional resources in place as they continue to build out premium online food brands.

Well done Niall and the rest :-)

keith

Thanks again to Claire Wilson

Claire Wilson (herself of newborn.ie fame) took the smiley shot which featured in the Sunday Business Post today and which has also been used in a number of other online and print places. Thanks to Claire for agreeing to make it available - much appreciate :-)

Newborn.ie is a simple and wonderful service where Claire will take To Be Treasured Forever photos of your newborn in natural settings and using natural light sources only.

Have a look at her gallery here ***BROODY ALERT***.

keith

Web-based guitar service completes funding round

On 3rd August Emma Kennedy covered the start of our Angel funding round and today Dick O'Brien did a piece on the closing. Link here to the article in their archives.

Thanks Dick.

Meanwhile on the opposite page (and larger than life!) Pat Phelan of Maxroam does a great interview on the cost of roaming, what to watch out for and how to cut costs. Thanks to Bernie Goldbach for the photo.

keith