Damien Mulley

Embryo stage right now. January 2008 in Dublin. All-day conference. Structure almost in place. Stay tuned. Yes, I’m looking for sponsors.

The it@cork Technology in Business Conference 2007 has an impressive lineup, as ever. There’s been some great speakers previously like Robert Scoble and Hugh Macleod and this year again, they’ve lined up some impressive people. Two that certainly I want to see are Hans Rosling and Anthony Williams. Rosling is the guy behind Gapminder and his talks at TED are legendary. Here’s his one from this year on poverty, watch it all or if you are busy skip to the end to see his party piece:

Williams is the co-author of the book “Wikinomics“, the book about mass collaboration.

Here’s the blog/website badge for the conference, details on how to add it to your blog are here.

(Nothing to do with the For Nine Pounds blog)
(Nothing to do with Ireland’s most famous blogger and author)

I love the idea of 50 pieces for 50 euros that happens every year with Habitat in Dublin and I love the idea of poundshops or Euro2 stores, as they’re now called, where everything under one roof is a simple set price. So I was wondering about the idea of a website that aggregated offers from Irish companies. Services for a flat fee of 20 euros.

Examples:
For twenty quid we’ll give you a domain and hosting for a year.
For twenty quid I’ll give you a twenty minute skype consultancy on what you need to change on your website frontpage to rank higher for certain keywords.
For twenty quid I’ll upgrade WordPress for you.
For twenty quid I’ll design a simple logo for you.
For twenty quid I’ll write a press release for you.

This wouldn’t be like the fantastic Bargain Alerts forum on boards.ie that highlights special offers, but which time out after a while. The forum too concentrates mostly on products of all types. The For Twenty Quid site would offer services as these are social things, in a way since they connect people together. Also too the offer would ideally be there for 6 months or at minimum 3 months.

I’d see it as a way for people with a limited budget to get something quality for a “must be stolen if it’s that low” price and as a foot in the door for those people that want to sell on additional and more in-depth services. Unlike some kind of Buy and Sell listings, there would be quality control so not any auld crap can be offered or useless stuff that isn’t of any use unless you pay for another product or service.

Every offer too would have a feedback option so you can read the reviews of the services that have been offered. Reviews are good.

I’m wondering what people think about such an idea and would they offer their own services on the site and what would they offer for twenty euros?

Is 20 Euros too cheap? Would dealing with 20 euro payments mean too many resources used to cash them? Should it be set at 50 euros to get rid of messers?

The other option is to just do this over a set few weeks every year where all money goes to charity and people are in effect donating their services in exchange for money going to a charity. It would be nice to see a blogger born charity initiative doing the rounds.

I’m subscribed via RSS to the Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Mailing list and there was a recent kerfuffle about ad campaigns and what to do and who to use. Seems some people took exception when people said let the experts run a campaign and don’t DIY.

Many people who know their stuff recommended Dave Davis and RedFly Marketing if you want to spend some lolly and run ads for whatever your campaign is. Now I’m on record as thinking ads, especially the Google ones are goddamned ugly and people who run them on personal blogs disrespect their readers but at the same time I do recognise there is a need for a company to run ad campaigns to get business. Nowadays it will be rather tough to rank highly for every area your business operates in, unless you are highly niche. Google will allow you to run DIY ads but just like you can build a staircase yourself it doesn’t mean you should. It seems the almost Dave Davis Fanboyism (I hope he reads this and blushes muhaha) irked some people who think what they do themselves can be just as good. Wake the fuck up. Unless you work in the Search Engine Marketing business on a daily basis, you will save money by outsourcing the work to crowds like Redfly for mid and large campaigns. Same goes for SEO. I know a little but I’d spend to earn if I had a commercial site and would bring in the Hearnster. (Aside: I was hearing ads on the radio all week for a bloke called Richard Hearns who lives some of the year in Dublin and some in thailand and who’s an artist and I was thinking, a secret life of an artist, the sly dog. But no. Diff Hearnster.)

Check out some of the comments here.

loving this:

It is an insult to someone’s intelligence if people think that you need to be an expert to get the best from an AdSense campaign.

and this:

This discussion smacks of elitism and a fair amount of back slapping between different parties who seem to share vested interests.

Adsense and Adwords are not incredibly difficult once you take time to read the instructions.

Handbags at dawn, while brain checked into the cloakroom.

Now I have no affiliation with Dave though we have chatted now and then about search engine marketing but I have heard high praise from various quarters about his work. Google being Google and their lack of transparency and shit customer care and feedback means that it really does take a lot of dedication to know all the tricks and methods to maximise both search engine ranking and search engine marketing. I’d leave it to a pro.

This video has nothing to do with nothing.