Category Archives: Business Development

How to (un)successfully advertise on the Internet, Part 2

This is Part 2 in bi-weekly series by Oban Lambie.  Part I is here.

User controlled, high resolution, all-weather web camera hosting

The Product

I wish I could tap into some super-entrepreneurial mental database to come up with exotic new products and services, but I can’t.  Sometimes, however, one falls flies right into the window (that would be a “bluebird” customer), He even told us exactly how to build the product.

I love customers like this.

This nameless customer said, “I prefer to shake hands with the people I do business with.” (What?!? How un-Web 2.0!  Where do handshakes fit into online social networking?!?)

He’d spent the previous year paying a large company to host his network of web cams. They were slow to respond to his requests, when they responded at all.  Their video players where choppy and they plastered their own logos all over the web cam players. The final straw came when our customer asked that his own logo be used instead and they refused.

Could we fulfill his requests and host his network of web cams?

Continue reading How to (un)successfully advertise on the Internet, Part 2

How to (un)successfully advertise on the Internet, Part 1

This is Part 1 of  a series by Oban Lambie.  Part II is here.

I’ve done some hard time on the ‘Net.  For years, stretching into decades, I’ve coded sites, run servers, and held the hands of customers both big and small to get my little business to where it is now; a hosting and programming shop in Taos, New Mexico.  I love the work, my staff is great, our customers are loyal and happy, and though we’re not getting rich, it pays the bills.

Now I’m going to try to do three things, none of which I’ve successfully done before:

  1. Launch a new product on the ‘Net.
  2. Find some people that have never heard of me, or my business, and persuade them to buy the product online.
  3. Show you exactly how I do it.

The Promise

I’ll expose everything, pants on the ground style, while I do it  – from the under-the-hood technology, to the how-we-target-Keywords techniques, to the Search Engine Optimization tricks that we’ll employ and finally through a wee bit of email marketing.  I’ll also show you what tools I use to track my successes and failures and detail exactly how much money we make, or lose, in the process.

But first…
Continue reading How to (un)successfully advertise on the Internet, Part 1