Archive for January, 2008

The Devil Is In The Detail

Published
by
Gail Geronimos
on January 24, 2008
in General
. 3 Comments

Hi Everyone

You know by now that I’m mad keen on the internet. It’s going to be one of the biggest influencers in 2008. And we are well into gearing up to build a strong internet side of Achaeus.

InfusionCRM (our CRM system) is working - thank heavens! That was a difficult decision but it has paid off. It’s done everything that we needed it to do. If you don’t get the technology right in this business life will be traumatic.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that you simply set up your systems and marketing and just collect the money. It doesn’t work like that. The devil is in the detail and it can drive you mad. Make sure you have a good techie on staff to plough through the technology maze.

We are planning a big internet workshop to share with all our colleagues and clients what we’ve learnt - warts and all. Some of the best internet marketers in Australia will be there.

Anyway, we’ll be covering all you need to know at our workshop. Contact me if you want more information.

Cheers

Gail

Want tips to outsource research?

Published
by
Gail Geronimos
on January 21, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

Hi everyone

We are looking for a new internet product. And, like all of you, we don’t want to do the gruntwork. Now, I have absolutely no doubt that researching a new product is the most critical job - get this wrong and you’re stuffed.

So we spent literally days on the brief for our outsource talent. It took longer and was harder to do than we thought. The brief ended up being 1.5 pages. What a concentration of energy and thought!

Here is the structure that we used:

Purpose, what is required?, the ideal contractor will look like…, specific talent required, timeframe, report requirements, reference resources.

We posted the contract for 7 days on rentacoder.com, elance.com and guru.com. Guru and elance tend to focus more on quality and ratings. We had 16 responses - most of our responses came from rentacoder and were based in the US.

Then we prepared a table listing the bids against a set of criteria like:

done similar work, their ratings, experience, specialised in research, bad feedback, price.

We picked the top 2 , did a little more work and made a selection.

We spent a lot of time on this but the outcome is critical to our success. If your brief is sloppy the result will be sloppy. These contractors cannot read minds. Clear written communication is EVERYTHING. It’s not like having someone in your office where you can tic tac every few hours.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Gail

Ready for a big year?

Published
by
Gail Geronimos
on January 18, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

Hi all
It’s been an interesting start to the year. Lots of upset on the stock exchange, US using the “R” word and Australia still fairly buoyant, business wise.

We’ve had a good look at our products and they’ll be lots of new stuff on offer this year. Keep your eyes open for the announcements. We’ve got 2 new products at this stage - Setting Goals and Website Audits. As well, we’re collaborating with colleagues to offer quite a different workshop in March.

Internet marketing will be big for us. We are learning lots about outsourcing research and product development. There are a couple of good sites where you can access a bucketload of expertise. The trick is to get a good expert. We’re constantly fine tuning that process.
Have a look at these sites:

www.elance.com
www.rentacoder.com
www.guru.com

Before you contract anyone go and talk to someone who has been through the process. It’s a little tricky to get it right but when you do the payoff is high.

Till next time.

Gail

Domain “Tasting” with Network Solutions

Published
by
Christian Bowman
on January 15, 2008
in General
. 1 Comment

A colleague of mine Paul Cherry from Boomerang.com.au gave me a heads up on some sneaky activity that Network Solutions have started do. It’s called Registrar Domain “Tasting” which is the practice of a registrar holding a domain when someone does an availability search. So if you search for a domain at Network Solutions, they will register it before you’ve even purchased it yourself and if you try and register it elsewhere it will be unavailable. You can then only register it from Network Solutions who then put the price up when you return to buy it off them the next day until they release it on day 5.

Try it yourself, goto Network Solutions and search for a domain - try something with 3 or 4 different words in it just so you can test it. Then do a availability search at Melbourne IT and do a search on the same domain name…

Basically there is a five day “Grace” period at the start of any domain registration which allows the registrar to refund a domain and return it back to the available domain pool. During this period you can check traffic stats, previous referrals and in this particular case, hold it ransom to get customers to buy only off them if they search for it.

Check out Domain Name News for more information about registrar domain “tasting”.