Melissa

Melissa was round last night for dinner and the 'Apprentice' final. We love the Badger and if I could afford a sales manager I could think of no one better, but Michelle was always going to win.
The market research continued with Melissa a 34 year old, regular user of the Internet but would rather talk about 'She Pees' than web sites.
Again the over 30s wanted easier design on the eye. They like pictures and colours where the younger candidates don't care as long as they don't have to scroll down to view everything. They would go to a smaller text size if their links increased to the point where they needed to scroll.
Text resizers TTT are a must.
Melissa would definitely use BYOP for the concept, although if I didn't know her I would have trouble convincing her to click on any link we managed to get into her inbox. The charity aspect might be enough to swing her.

Must write to Sarahs' Dad

Rebecca & Sam

Rebecca and Sam came round for dinner last night. They're here on their OE from New Zealand.
Rebecca is 23, a Graphic Artist and uses the web both at home and at work.
Sam is 21, on a year out from studying Medicine and is a regular user of the Internet.
This is the first market research carried out on anyone under 30.
The candidates gave the most positive responses yet both to the userbility, the usefulness, the design and the functionality. They were attracted to the page first and foremost and could see how if there were any waverers they would be sold on the Social Enterprise aspect.

This project will work, this is a fantastic age group to appeal to.

Note to Dom. Yes 'Bookmarks' and 'Favourites' are great but what about when you are on another machine?

The Product is the Page.

This is the page I am working on: http://www.com1uk.com/OneWorld/nomessage.html - you get here by clicking on the 'Remove Text' on the index page which I will put up later.
The reason you are removing the text is because first and foremost this is a useful Home Page. I am using this one at the moment as it is far better than my previous one even at this initial mock up stage.
To use this page as your own Home Page you must 'sign in' to be able to 'personalise' this page with your own links.
This is the product we are offering to the customer and it is free to use.

Generating Revenue

Money is generated by joining a commission based affiliate marketing program like http://www.cj.com or by signing individual arrangements with companies.

For example:

Churchill Insurance are currently paying £45 per lead if the customer linking from your site buys Home + Car Insurance.

You could add another 5 insurance companies to this list who all have similar incentives thus giving the customer the choice they would need to link through BYOP. You are not going to cut individual deals with Insurance companies so you would link to all of them using an affiliate program.

The costs involved with tracking leads and the access required to the server that the Insurance company sits on is too prohibitive to set up individual arrangements at this stage.

If a customer requires a web site or software development they can click on the link to http://www.coddo.com and if they then go on to buy something BYOP will get 15% of whatever they spend. I currently have an arrangement with Coddo for 10% of any new business leads we supply them and I'm sure I could get 15% for charity and the advertising potential that it gives them. I trust Raj so tracking software is not required.

--------------------------------------------
Further explanation:
--------------------------
Once I am using the BYOP should I in the future want to buy an ipod then I would use my BYOP link to 'Kelkoo' to find the cheapest available, note the name of the website selling it and check back on the BYOP to see if I can link through directly earning a higher commission rate.
If the website is not listed on BYOP I would go back to Kelkoo (it already knows who I am from a 'Cookie' on my machine that I got when I last clicked on the Kelkoo link) and buy the ipod from the cheapest shop.
By linking to the website from Kelkoo, Kelkoo will charge the website for the click through and pay BYOP a commission for initiating the lead.
The cookie lasts for 30 days before expiring which means that as long as I buy the ipod within 30 days of first searching on Kelkoo for it it will remember that the originating link was from my machine.

Google can not be used for this project to generate income, I have spoken to them about it and they said no. There has to be a recognised sale before any commission can be paid. The Google Adwords program is based on CTRs (Click Through Rates) so they will not allow their clients ads on any 'incentive' based website. As we are offering the incentive of giving money to charity by clicking on the links this is unacceptable.
But as we will be heavily promoting Google by adding links to their various tools and websites and by including a Google Search on the page, once we starting putting through 2 million hits a month they will be asked to contribute money as part of their social responsibility and because of the huge marketing opportunity we have given them.
I have 3 'offers' in mind to start the ball rolling. Remember that the product is the Home Page, it does not actually require any revenue generating adverts to launch it or to attract people to use it. Users are what will count. If they come back to the page again and again you can add a new affiliate once a week and ask the user what affiliates they would like to see and if they know any websites offering better commissions etc.

My 3 to launch are:
1. Coddo - see the ad on BYOP
2. http://www.4cheapcds.com/ - I use them all the time. They are cheap and offer a great service. I have written to them to ask if they are interested. Because of client tracking issues I would be suggesting that there is a small text field and submit button by the 4CheapCDs link on BYOP . This would be used to send us the 'Order Number' which we would send to John at 4Cheap each week/month.
3. We have been building a Project Planner for our own use for the past 6 months. It enables us to organise our work flow on each project we build. I always intended to give this away for free as it is not a product we would want to take to market as a 'for sale' item but it works well and has completely changed the way we work.
You have probably seen how some websites ask for 'PayPal Donations'. We would do this. 'If you like it and want to donate click here.'
I would probably add Kelkoo / Froogle / USwitch / Last Minute & Opodo to this list as basic text links and if 4Cheap were not interested I would not replace it in my 'Top 3' unless someone came up with a good one.

My preference would always be to stay away from companies like Commission Junction as they are extremely restrictive and tight fisted. A common issue is that a website selling batteries would structure the commission like this:
For HD batteries click on this link - host receives 3%
For A batteries click on this link - host receives 3%
For AA batteries click on this link - host receives 3%
For AAA batteries click on this link - host receives 3%
They do this to get as many links on your page as possible. If you click on the HD link and end up buying AAs you can kiss your commission goodbye.
That's that.

Domains & Emails

I have so far:

• buildyourownpage.com
• buildyourownpage.co.uk
• buildyourownpage.eu
• buildyourownpage.co.nz

I need to get:

• buildyourownpage.com.au - Chris
• buildyourownpage.in - Ajay
  

I also have:

• buildyourownpage@googlemail.com
• buildyourownpage@hotmail.com

The First Mock Up

This is the one I've been working on over the weekend.
http://www.com1uk.com/OneWorld/nomessage.html

Just had Vicki and Dom round and they road tested it. Vicki is all over it but wants to see graphics to make it more user friendly and feminine, Rebecca the Graphic Artist, is arriving from the States on the 8th May thankfully. From that came the idea of changing templates to suit the user.

Dom was more reticent as he has his own system involving the Google Search Page, (Not 'Personalised') and IE Bookmarks. "2 clicks and I'm there". He is a great candidate because he realises that 'Bookmarks' work so just needs to be persuaded that we can put his Bookmarks on his 'Home Page' and make them easier to access (1 click and he will be there) and organise. However, he was immediately attracted to the idea of not changing his shopping habits whilst still being able to give to charity. He realises that Google are making money out of the searches he performs and the 'Sponsored' links he clicks. He would rather take more control over the revenue this generates.

This is the plan .....

I've had an idea because that's what I do best. I want to build a really useful but very simple home page that everyone can use through password access.

I use a similar home page now which I made myself and has worked for the past 5 years. Nothing I have seen and used has surpassed it for ease of use so I think a lot of other people would like to use it as well.

The Home Page is free to use for everyone. On the Home Page will be a list of links to various websites that have signed up for an affiliate marketing program like Commission Junction. If you click on one of the links and buy something from the site the project will earn a commission. If you can buy the item cheaper elsewere then let us know and we will use them instead. A running balance of the bank account and pending commissions will be displayed on the page.

The site is run as a Social Enterprise whereby 100% of the income of the site, minus running costs, is donated to charitable causes. The only difference between a Social business and Microsoft is what happens to the remaining money after all the bills have been paid.

People don't work for free long term because they can't afford to. Getting everything for free is not a good business model becaue it is non-sustainable. If you're getting your hosting and web programming for free someone, somewhere, will be cutting corners.

The project is run by committee and anyone can become a commitee member by signing up. All business related decisions have to be agreed by commitee including wages and expenses and a full and detailed statement of accounts will be posted each month.