Yellow Pages Australia is about to publish its online directory and they want to link to your website. I get a lot of requests for web pages around now from people who want websites because of this Yellow Pages deadline. Yellow Pages aside, and for March only, I can do you a beautiful single page web site (including yearly hosting) for only A$650.00 or, for our US-based friends, US$600.00.

What I will do for $650

Build you a single, entry-level web page with .com domain.*
Yearly cost is $150/pa (hosting, domain name and maintenance).

* Add $35pa. extra for a .com.au domain (A$685 total cost – proof of business registration required)

This package is ideal for quickly getting yourself on the web and establishing your company’s internet presence. Use your existing email address.

• NB: You can upgrade from this single page website to a 6 page business (updateable) website any time for an additional $1,400.

Features :

• A 2 column, single webpage
• Your logo (must be provided)
• 1 to 3 photos / graphics of your product or service
• A single Contact Form (6 fields of info sent directly to your email)
• Links to other sites
• Traffic stats sent to you weekly

• NB : logo must be provided either as emailed .jpg, .gif, .pngor .eps.

Send images with this form

and we will get back to you within 48 hours.

But exactly how honest ought we be? Do we reveal everything about ourselves?

I recently built www.cavepictures.net for Cave Pictures – a 3D graphic design business which does architectural and mining company animations as well as computer modelling etc. This client, like myself, works mostly alone and from home. The front page of the site had a nice space set aside for a picture of the business premises, an address and phone number etc.. I told the client to go outside and take his best pic. He took a lovely, flattering picture of his new home which we put up on the website – with the street address.

A week went by. I had some further dealings with this client and we were both vaguely worried that the picture didn’t look professional enough. I work at home so I also have the same problem. We don’t have an office building or an entry foyer we can proudly display on our front pages – just our work. So we decided to just snap off a few nice pics. Just the client sitting at the computer, working with a smile. Everybody wants to see the guy they’re buying off, right? The picture looked good, so we took away the address and just put in a phone number and his name.

Again, some time passed and we both felt it just wasn’t right. It didn’t feel “authentic” enough.

I emailed my Third Tribe Associates, some of whom are big players in the marketing world (not my forte). Just how much can we say on Twitter and on our websites to potential new clients. They told me a bunch of interesting things:

1. Being boring is the greatest sin in marketing. Don’t be boring. Probably the biggest mistake you could make is to try [to come over as] some corporate drone.

and

2. By being true to yourself, the clients that don’t like you don’t “knock” [on your business door]. That is a great thing in my book. Those that do like you will knock and probably more loudly. And working with them should be more enjoyable.

and

3. I actually fired all my clients years ago because I didn’t like working for people that I didn’t connect with. These were clients I built up by being ‘normal’ and ‘professional’. Those are things I’m usually not so I attracted people I generally didn’t like.

Rob eventually found a picture of himself having a great time while out Rallying. It’s a passion of his. He had the typical Rally Driver “Thumbs Up” and looked very happy in his helmet and rally gear. He uploaded it to the site and suddenly, the authenticity was apparent. Here is a guy who does 3D drawings and animations who also goes rallying for a bobby. The picture just clicked. The site had a real person behind it.

So – I think my business advisors of the Third Tribe are right. Don’t be afraid to show something of yourself to potential clients. They are going to find out how you are anyway, so why not be a little less guarded and give them some idea of the person who they will be dealing with? People do business with other people. Perhaps we should be mindful of that.

CAVE Pictures is a 3D computer graphics and animation company. They do architectural and mining company walkthroughs, still realisations of designs in 3D and sometimes two dimensional cartoons for television. Proprietor Rob pamonari cut his teeth doing news graphics and then went on to work for ABC TV doing regular animation spots for educational shows.

Click here to visit the new BTA website

The graphics and colour scheme have just been applied and the site is working well. Four people administer the site and write articles / blogs. Each has their own level of access and only the administrator can do things like add new site pages.

The site also incorporates some Paypal functionality. People and families are able to join or renew their memberships and you can sign up to receive new information via email.

Click here to visit Mr Trivia’s new website

I updated the server, sourced and modified an existing site template, changed the graphics, text and positioning of elements to suit and then imported hundreds of BLOG posts from his Blogger account. Phew! I fancy myself a pretty okay blogger, so I was a little envious to see so many posts.

Blog Copyright

Blogger is a public space for BLOG writers, but the copyright and ownership of what is actually written was once in contention (read Blogger’s own Terms of Service). While writers now own the intellectual property of their BLOGs, this was once “contended”. And it’s not just Blogger (also known as Blogspot) who have claimed ownership of website content. Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube have, at separate times, attempted to claim content as their own. The backlash was always loud and angry (Duh!).

There’s a lot of money to be made on the web with web “content.” Search Engine’s love sites with lots of high quality content, rewarding them by shoving any site with good content (and in-bound links from similar “industry leader” sites) to the top of an organic search (ie. non-sponsored search result page). Attempts to claim ownership of other people’s content usually fail, but the best solution to such corporate machinations is to host your own domain and set up your own BLOG or website. Having your own site ensures that everything you do – is entirely yours.

The good thing about WordPress is that it’s relatively easy to import an entire Blogger account. You will probably need to alter images sizes etc. to suit the template, and a bit of time to do it, but for the most part, it’s an easy relocation. How is it done in Wordpress?

1. Go into Wordpress admin panel
2. Go down to tools and click import
3. Find the BLOG / CMS platform you wish to import your content from
4. Fill in any extranneous info and click import
5. Wait (it takes a while)

That’s it!

Here’s a nifty Legal Guide on the Intellectual Property Rights of Bloggers.

Happy Blogging!

* This site is using Wordpress as its Content Management System (CMS)

Open the following site in a new window

http://philjengkane.tumblr.com

… and listen to this half hour podcast by clicking the bar at the bottom of your screen. I also have a tumblr site under the pseudoname objectman, but it’s not as well developed as Phil’s site.

www.narellebelle.com
www.cavepictures.net
www.ccpwa.com.au

You’ll notice that there’s a new, stylised “site coming soon” placeholder on the first two sites. This is to give clients an idea of how their site is progressing over the 4 weeks it takes to build. If you have a twitter account, you can also link it to that so that there’s not just a big blank space staring potential customers down. Remember that you need to do something on your site every day in order to drive consistent and regular traffic. This might be a simple BLOG message like this one – or a competition where you give something away.

If you’re looking for a website, be quick as January is already booked up and now that I’ll be working closely with my friends at www.itomic.com (doing interface designs) – February is starting to fill, too. Looking forward to meeting you in the New Year. Let’s get 2010 on the road, as I feel that 2011 is much closer than we think.