Common Name: Friendster
Niche: adults (18+) - Social Networking Website
What the say about themselves: "Friendster is focused on helping people stay in touch with friends and discover new people and things that are important to them. Online adults, 18 and up, choose Friendster to connect with friends, family, school, social groups, activities and interests."
What I say about Friendster: Yet another genic SMN with Youtube video, photos, and a lot of immature apps to add sparkly things and flashy graphics to your profile. Blatently commercial pages and heavily spammed forum postings. Corporate users create "social advertising pages" mixed in with a lot of childishness and ranting and raving.
www.friendster.com
Common Name: Engage.com
Niche: Social dating
Slogan: "nice to meet you"
What they say about themselves: "Our goal? Make it as easy to meet new people and explore an attraction online as it is to discover someone new at a trusted friend’s party, out in the real world."
What I say about Engage.com: nice idea, you socialize and earn points for uploading photos, posting, making friends, in the end, the more social you are, the more points you get -- the idea being to meet someone online sets Engage apart from the MySpace clones.
www.engage.com
Common Name: Bebo
Niche: general, Social Media Network
What Bebo says about themselves: "Bebo is a social media network where friends share their lives and explore great entertainment."
What I say about Bebo: typical SMN features, personal pages like myspace, has a lot of applications including games, calculators, fortune cookie type displays and other time wasters you can waste a lot of time fooling with. Nothing particarly special about Bebo.
http://www.bebo.com
A lot of people sell themselves as "web designers" or "web developers", and a lot of organizations hire these people to take charge of their online presence. But.. a web designer or a web developer is not usually a "webmaster".
As a freelance designer and developer, (and offsite webmaster for several sites), I read a lot of online classifed ads from people looking to hire someone to design or build a website, or update one, or manage it. I'm sure it must be confusing for many of them -- especially small businesses and even for larger organizations if their isn't someone on staff who knows enough to ask the right questions when hiring for web oriented positions.
Some people post, "Web Designer Needed", then go on describe a job that requires a CS or BA degree and experience noting specific programming languages, protocols or [READ MORE...]
Using Volusion Coupon Codes and Promos
You had a web designer create a custom template for your Volusuion store and it looks great. You got great products. You've got great prices. You offer great service. But, you aren't getting enough traffic to your site.
What's next? You look into Adwords and other PPC advertising, and even spend a little money to buy some traffic. It works well, but after considering your narrow profit margin, and competition for keywords in your market, you think, "There has to be a better (cheaper) way to get people to the site".
One way to get traffic is to run a promotion. Sure, you could buy PPC ads to promote the special pricing, free shipping offer, or other savings -- but then you realize there [READ MORE...]
