Running a Directory as a full time Business

I own a network of websites that produce an income for myself and my wife. Part of the revenue comes from directories. In reality, the amount of money coming from my directories probably could support some people as an income, but I wouldn't be comfortable owning directories only. In case you hadn't noticed, web directories really aren't as hot with surfers as they used to be.

For that reason alone most of your monetization comes from B2B clients. You can earn a steady income this way, but I really don't consider the future that bright.

 

Everything's gone specialised now. General directories have had it, only one or two are used (if that) and they are Yell.com and Thompson, but even those big guns have lost significant revenue with advertisers not renewing expensive ads.

The Yellow Pages model worked well for years, but the web is the future and searchers want speed of results when looking for products. Even some of the smaller search engines eg: AltaVista, AllTheWeb etc are feeling the lack of sales and there's a reason behind that. The results just aren't fast enough, and people are busy at work, home and want to find stuff fast - the general engine can't do it, it's not built for that.

Also advertising is too expensive with £10'000 for a week's advertising on Yahoo. Lycos £5'000 a week, MSN £1'500 per month etc.

I know one guy that spent £10k a month on advertising, someone else took a display ad with YP, and that cost him £400ish. He didn't renew it and got hassled by Yell for his trouble.

Many are just not renewing and it's probably because of results combined with cost.

 

More likely for most of us, a directory is merely one site in a larger portfolio of sites that comprise an online business, but I would agree with other responses that BOTW and perhaps a few of the other largest directories could be run as a single, full time business for the owners.

 

Read what was written downunder, not what you think was written? Perhaps a case of misinterpretation?


I wrote and I quote....

I did not say anywhere that the directory is mine, I did not claim anywhere that it does not provide an income, I stated it did not provide ME an income. There could be a myriad of reasons for that, of which I don't intend to tell you.

You just probably read it wrong? If I wanted to I suppose I could make a good living out of it, but in all honesty I don't but if I did I'd be doing it as a student and not as a fully fledged businessman. Does that make sense?

It is a good topic for discussion so why not answer? I value your view as I do many on here but most seem afraid to answer which is worrying as that lends to people appearing they have something to hide when perhaps they don't?

If a discussion does develop I may be able to advise on how starter business's can get financial grants and so on but for some crazy reason people just don't want to learn? Or perhaps they have something to hide and can't declare they are business's I don't know.

That's the problem with this forum Downunder, too many people have things to hide, some idiot even commented on me and Event_King having a love affair because for once we agree on something giving me red, how pathetic is that.

Let me tell that anonymous poster. As much as I thought Event_King was a bit rude when he first posted that guy has more knowledge in his little finger than many on here and he isn't afraid to share it.

Why don't people start acting like business people instead of kids, we'd get much further wouldn't we?

 

Yes you are right, they are few and far between.

 

Hi,

I think your question needs to be parsed to give a proper answer:

1) All revenue (income) from any source needs to be declared to the IRS, whether or not it is from a "proper business".

2) There are many ways to establish a business: e.g., sole proprietorship, small business partnership, small business S corp., limited liability partnership or corporation, C corporation. Each type reports income differently. But whether or not you consider yourself business, if you are earning income, you are a business.

3) If you are taking deductions from the business, the IRS expects that eventually you will have to pay yourself a salary. If you can't then you have to declare deductions in another way. It cannot go on forever. Accountants can help you with this.

4) A business does not have to be a full time occupation in order to be considered business for income reporting purposes.

5) There are probably 1000s of directories that are a business. Whether or not they provide sufficient income to support a person or family is another story. Probably the vast majority cannot. I'm going to start-up Links.com as a directory pretty soon. There are several niches I am looking at. I'll let you know how it goes.

Rich

 

That's fantastic, never heard a comment like that on a forum before

As I see it, there are 2 types of directory owner - the serious and those who are content to get some pocket money from it. Whatever the intention behind them, they must be good enough to provide the service, so they can make profits, and the serious ones will always do a superior job at it, and you can always tell the good ones.

But it doesn't matter how good or nice the directory looks, if it copies, then people are going to find this out. Have no illusions, the public will check you out well before spending anything, and I feel many amateurs think this isn't so, that they can just stick up any old thing and it will impress because others have done it, and were successful. That's probably the 2nd biggest mistake they will make.....

The first is to copy others ideas, and the third is maybe to select a naff, unmemorable domain name.

The directory 'industry' (if such an industry exists) is a very competitive one, and certainly more than many will ever realise. Forget webmaster ones, it's the large companies that have the power, the reach, the millions and the manpower to destroy at will. What I'm trying to get across is these major companies know they own the market eg: Reed Business owns about 80 specialist directories, portal sites, engines and magazines - both online and off -- and that's just one out of about 4 groups of player, so you've lost before you even begun chatting to that web bloke and registered that amazing domain name. I mean why bother, yes, yes I hear the "But we should try" or "you don't know sweet whatever" etc - but it's so true, and much research needs to be done before setting up any web business, never mind something so tough as a directory.

The reason for insults from webmasters is they've spent too much time, effort and maybe cash in their idea, and they realise they've screwed up big time - but ofcourse it's too late, and it's so tough to let go of that 'creation' - it's too personal, and they can't say to themselves "You know what, I did mess up and it was a bad decision, so I'm going to take it down and start again" - they can't do it. But being an entrepreneur is about not being experts here, and finding out as you go and yes, even admitting it was a bad idea.

It takes guts and strength to throw away money, but businesses do it all the time, I mean look at the amount of start-up retail shops there are, every 4 months, another new shop appears, and then shuts down 3 months later.

It's crazy to think these brand new shops will beat the already established brands. Mobile phone shops are prone to this, they set up and shut down nearly as fast, and it makes me wonder what research they did. Perhaps they did it to make some fast cash, but come on there's easier ways of doing that and probably cheaper too. But still.......

It's just as easy to think of a specialist area for a directory, as it is to set up a copycat general one. Or can't people brainstorm these days, as it only takes at most 1 month to research something, but they just race in there without thinking it seems with the attitude of "well, but amazon did it", yeah, but you don't have their cashflow.....


I spend quite a bit of time searching (or hoping hehe) for that next brilliant niche portal, and found one a few months back. I was surprised the owner went the route that he did, but thinking about it, he was correct in what he did. What a really, truly useful site, and I think the guy got some press out of it too.

So it really pays to think first before wildly wacking up some copycat directory.

 

Interesting comments. Thanks.

I am thinking of starting a series of nice directories on Links.com, using the In-Portal scripts (includes ratings, reviews, most popular sites, news, blog, forum). Do you think think that it is possible to develop the site into a highly trafficked site with the right site content? I would appreciate your comments.

Also, is there a list of the high powered directories (e.g. the Reed directories) anywhere. I would like to look at successful sites. Thanks.

Rich

 

Yes I do.

 

same here.

Corporation Name: enQuira Inc.
Corporation #6889867
BN #828671354RC0001
ACT Name: Canada Business Corporations
Incorporation:2007/12/13

 

My general directory - free/small fee for paid featured's makes enough to cover my own personal sites' registration fees/renewal fees and the hosting for all of 'em. It's not much, it just means I can pursue a hobby for free! Anything else that can be classified as 'profit' goes in to buying more advertising and/or directory submissions.

IMO, you probably could make a directory big enough to make a clean living from - but you'd have to throw in a hell of a lot of time/money to get it to that level where the ROI would be high enough to stabilise your everyday life.

For me, although still a student, any 'extra' money comes from serving adverts (adsense, kontera, other sites advertising on my sites, etc). Once in a blue moon, it might generate enough to buy a spare few old floppy disks

 

Well ok crossed wires, move on.

On topic i am currently in process of attempting the magic income with a directory, and if i am honest this has been the hardest undertaking in my time, internet is ot my normal play ground.

I do not doubt that it can be done nor do i doubt that i will make an income from it, and for me that will be a hefty 6 figure number to replace my current income.

I have said from go this is for me similar to what a person does when making a sea change but in this case with my work, it is a challenge that i alone do not have all the answers, but if others are happy to discuss the topic then i am happy to share the concept / idea's and info i have found that may or may not help.

I am very sure many start with the intention of making an income but never realise that potential and are often dismayed with the outcome.

 

Getting worried there, are ya?

I do pay tax to earn the state more oil and blood on our hands through my official job - I don't officially work enough (in Scotland) to make enough to trigger the limit where UK students have to pay tax.

Pre-tax earnings must exceed £5,435 to pay tax, and £105 per week for N.I.

I obviously make more than £5,435 through my weekend job, although I actually work at it during the week and at nights - so also taking those extra hours/overtime into play.

Our accountant already checked into this for me - and as it turns out I'd have to make over £5,435 a year on my own terms to have to start paying tax. Luckily, that won't be happening any time soon - unless you have a few thousand sites to submit?

 

richrf,

Firstly, be original and lose the ratings, reviews, most popular sites, blog, forum, as it's old news and every directory seems to have done this, so why copy them. The news might be okay, it depends on whether you go the portal route or not and Forums are heavy maintenance, trust me I run one!

Secondly, your choice of domain name Links.com won't be remembered and won't do your site justice. You want something that will not be forgotten.
Don't set yourself up as another webmaster - it doesn't sell.


First decide on the directory service, way before settling on domain names. The site service (who you will serve, NOT the advertisers), will help you choose the domain/company name. You want to spend a long time on this because if you get it wrong, your idea will be sunk anyway for the knock on effect a bad domain will have.

Forget keyword domains, they aren't clever, new and won't catch anyones attention or stay in their minds - which is vital as you want visitors to return again and again. Choose a brand name - branding is in - big time in.

You want Google.com but not mykeyword.com.


Reed Business Info

http://www.reed-elsevier.com/index.cfm?articleid=91



I have an old post that I put on another forum and I'll track it down to add it here. It is a useful story about my first failure on the web, but it has some very useful factual details about what you will face when setting up a web business. It's more keyed to a directory set up, but has some more general info that applies to most businesses.

 

Wow, this thread has been all over the place.

To me the phrase "directory as a business" has two meanings - one relates to how you actually run your directory and the other relates to whether or not you are earning enough to live off of.

I doubt there are many here in the second group though I suspect there are some that are living off the proceeds of their websites in which some portion of their income is derived from their directories.

There are however, quite a number of members who run their directory as a business as per my first definition. I would consider my directories a part of my overall income/business and I report that income accordingly. I would also say that I run my directories "like a business" in that I treat my TOS as a binding contract between me and my submitters and I recognize the fact that what I do can and does impact both my potential income as well as that of my submitters.

A directory should always be run like a business. The level of professionalism displayed by a directory owner identifies whether or not the directory is being "run like a business" or something less than that.

Enough to live off and 'run like a business' are often two very different issues.

 

Then I'll offer you my advice via p.m

 

A Cautionary Tale of the Rise and Fall of a Directory Development Project


The Fall of my Directory idea - Part 1

I started on the web in late 2002, and the first resource I ever saw was MSN, probably as it was installed to appear when Internet Explorer first opens - but was totally blown away by this resource, and just knew I had to do something - but what?

I’d used computers since 1985, and although not a web designer, I trained in applications software before settling into a career in Customer services for 9 years, and knew that my expertise in sales would enable me to do more than just sell computers to the public - greater things beckoned. I ended up working for a millionaire, but was still unfulfilled and eventually set up my first business as a freelance CV writer and job advisor.

The CV website was my first attempt and contact with all things webby, and due to my severe lack of web knowledge, the actual site stank something rotten, but yet I loved it, and eventually learned that it was a totally unnecessary expenditure, and didn’t really help me at all, but I suppose it taught me something - don’t make financial impulse buys! Many other directories wanted me to buy links once they found out I was trading hmmmm……

Funnily enough, I used Yellow Pages to generate calls and drum up a fair amount of business, and made about £1000 in profit, which I then put into a new venture - the directory.

The Idea

This is the hardest part of starting a business, because if the idea stinks, then any money, promotion will fail. Idea had to be easy to do, something that people know about and want - charges and costs would come later, but for the time being the idea had to be easy, hmmmm easy I was thinking, and although a directory is easy in principle, I had no idea of what was ahead of me - no way of possibly knowing that….. And I soon found out exactly what was involved in setting up a directory - never mind about running one, basically I had no idea what was around the corner, and had I known what the costs would be, I would never have started it in the first place.

Ok - the idea was to be a directory, a portal or window to other sites - sounds easy don’t it, well I guess it kind of is, but the work involved sheesh….. I spent hours and hours searching the web to see what other directories offered and knew that if I can do it better, then maybe it would stand a chance, but there’s only one way to know and that’s to just do it, except really go for it in a no holds barred way, so did exactly that.

Having compiled a list of directories, I went about visiting them one by one and making notes of services, prices, the way search results were presented, directory types, whether they were financed or not etc etc. I realised if mine were to succeed then the all-purpose directory wasn’t the way to go, and felt this was tired and uninteresting, it didn’t float my boat, so something more was required not just to keep my interest, but deliver an experience that actually advertises clients, as I knew this was the secret of success.

Planning the Directory

I did what Alex Tew had done, sat down with a pen and paper (Coffee and pasta) and just began writing Categories eg: Advertising, Accommodation etc, even though I’d later delete nearly 60% of these, I needed ideas to trigger ideas, and this objective was to force ideas out of me.

After 2 hours work, I had about 30 categories, and once I had those the hard part was deciding and listing all the 500 sub-categories (another 2 weeks work), which is where the companies/clients would be listed, but at this point still had no idea of the directory’s specialty area or services it was to offer - but hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day right!

I persisted until I had 500 plus categories, but at this point it was only a list, no web structure, well, no site actually but had no operating cash, so it was about 12 months until I could afford to get the thing designed - bit of a problem that, but wasn’t worried about anyone stepping in ahead of me. I knew nobody had my knowledge, as this idea was soooooooooo niche a niche, it would be a fluke to even think about it, never mind set up the categories for it. (But impatience is a killer which nearly ruined my entire directory idea - more about that later.)

I thought I’d run this idea past a few friends, luckily my friends all work in most of the fields of business and at a top level. One friend in particular, at the time, worked for the BBC, thought it was a good idea and that it would get some press interest, and the directory idea was pretty simple concept, low risk and people traded links so went for it.

Choosing a web designer

So having saved up £1500, started gaining quotes for database design. I guess I must of contacted about 10 designers at quotes of £5000, £12’000 and even £24’000, which was just ridiculous and knew I could get a simple directory for about £4000ish.

I then had the brainwave of contacting my old designer (CV website), talked it through with him, and managed to get a quote for £3000, paid him half up-front and the balance on completion - sorted! I suppose it took about 3 weeks in all to build, but it looked fantastic, and of course I fell in love with it (big mistake) and started to have the dreams of millionaire status, girls, cars, money and fame etc etc lol. All too easy - but was about to find out just how tough an undertaking this would be.

The thing about web designers is they are professional people and want paying for everything (funny that), so didn’t know what my entire needs were, so got one of these CMS systems done too, which allows me to totally manage the entire directory without bugging a designer to add/delete stuff - very cool. Despite this cool feature, I ended up under-estimating my emails to him for adjustments and errors that will crop up with websites, never mind a fully functioning directory - but it was pretty much so well designed that it worked out in the end.

It’s important with all sites that you plan everything out on paper, so I chose colour, design/look, features and services - handed this over and it was just easier for me this way. Okay, so now I had this gorgeous looking directory, and also the biggest nightmare was to come - filling the beast!

Filling the Monster

K, so I have to get this filled somehow, had no more cash, advertising was out of the question, so my only option left was direct mail/email sales. My idea was to give away 100% free entries and hopefully fill it that way.

Now bear in mind that 500 odd categories had to be filled here, so you’ll understand when I say what a nightmare this turned out to be - but I’d committed myself, and if I didn’t do it, I could kiss goodbye to £3k - and wasn’t about to do that.

I put together this sales letter (god knows how bad this thing was lol), but how the heck was I to contact these businesses - no contact info. So, I got hold of offline directories, you name it, I got it; the YP, Thomson Local, Kellys etc etc and went through and extracted every email address, phone number and company name I could find.

Took me 3 months to do it, then had to key all of this into a word document (for saving) and then email individually into the sales letter to be sent out to businesses.

At the end I had about 4000 emails with which to work with, but email having just a response rate of 4%, meant that a good 1000 emails would be binned/deleted, another 1000 would be false addresses, another 500 would bounce back, and 500 would politely (or not so nicely) tell me where to stick my directory - leaving me with about 1000 quality and useable addresses.

This would be the list that hopefully would become my first entries and maybe turn out to be clients, but you can’t think like that, as too many variables involved and at this stage it’s only a first contact situation so wasn’t expecting any sales - my only priority was to fill the thing up.

I hit the send button…… and woosh, you wouldn’t believe the amount of faulty emails out there, and bounce backs lol. I ended up with about only 500 addresses, and got about 100 entries from all that work - phew… But wasn’t about to be put off, no way - I got on the web and went a email hunting - and got another 300 addresses or something.

But soon realised that perhaps this wasn’t the best use of my time hehe, and went about seeking links and tried the ole PPC thing for a while.

The Link Problems

Having done little link swaps and approaches, this area was foreign territory, and a learning experience that taught me a heck of a lot. I realised early on that quality would be liked and highly sought after, and that was partly how I wanted the directory designed, but purely 100% quality, will only attract a certain type of visitor, advertiser and partner, so opted for a mixture of both quality and size of database - but ensuring that I kept the directory niche.

I figured that quality would attract quality, and links with it, I submitted to every directory, search engine known, (I really forget exactly what I did link-wise), but at the end of 12 months, I probably had in the region of 20’000 links - everyone just linked to me, as there’s no way I did even 5000 link swaps. I guess just had a nice site, but must have hit this link mass thing that is talked about, well wasn’t complaining….. (if I could only replicate that).

Maybe other sites mistook my directory to be a webmaster one, and got lucky with a few high traffic sites. The links continued to come in, then 5 months down the line, they suddenly stopped, my site got sandboxed , and it was a mare to get back on track, but somehow managed it.

At this point had about 1’500 sites in the index and started to get some brand blue-chip companies listing themselves eg: Kardex, BusinessServe and Cornhill Insurance, which was welcome and gave me something to shout about both on the site and off.

It was about 2005, directory was 3 years old and still getting those important submissions and a few paying clients (8 paid). These converted to more revenue via homepage links at £100 each and they are still clients today - but still a hell of a long way to go before recouping my initial investment of £4000.

Then sometime in March 05, I went mad and panicked for some reason - I felt that my niche wasn’t right, and after some working out, changed it, I changed the domain (silly idiot), the site design (another £800) and lost all my links, oops.

This was really the start of my fall, but strangely I somehow kept going as this was now an emotional trip and not a financial one anymore. Still undeterred, I bought some PPC, and did that for 5 months solidly, got some links back, but no way was I going to get 20k worth back Grrrrr, infact I checked and at the time had only 2000 links pointing to me, and this really worried me quite badly, the kind of worry that makes one just quit - but didn’t.

At my link peak, managed to fill the directory with 3200 sites by just email and using links to do it. Inside of 2 years.

Having resigned to the loss of that many links was hard, I got a little depressed, and my directory theme still was very wrong, and changed the site and domain again (£1000 in fees), and was totally broke - plus around about the same time lost my job, so things were very bad, and almost jacked it in. But I couldn’t, something inside of me said “I’d regret it for the rest of my life - don’t do it”, besides if I kept this directory, it can always be moulded into something else, so held onto it.

It’s like the thing is part of me, and the time, money and effort that went into building it - it’s my creation, I just couldn’t part with it. Problem is changing a domain firstly losses all links, plus clients and visitors might think this company doesn’t know what it’s doing…

So once I found a domain I liked, started the sales again and took a more, less panicky and slower approach to it all.



Doing the sales thing

Having done sales for many companies as an employee it’s so different doing this for your own business. One’s own baby makes sales more pleasurable, yet at the same time puts incredible pressure there, because you know you can’t afford to screw up and it was my reputation on the line if I got something wrong or didn’t deliver. So when designing the site, everything about it had to be simple and devastatingly effective for clients and users alike (but that’s where the skill of web designers comes in) , as I just knew deep down, if it wasn’t perfect then users would turn their noses up at it, and couldn’t afford for that to happen or my business would be dead - most likely.

Fortunately, I knew much about the service industry, and could anticipate customer’s needs - but what was difficult was to come up with fresh new ideas to impress. Once everything was in place, and all basics were covered, I began working out the sales letters, and must admit my first efforts were pretty useless, and the results told me a lot - they told me I had to change the entire letter myself or seek outside help, so I engaged the help of a copywriter with 15 yrs experience (so he says….). Had a chat with the guy, and he painted a picture of ‘nothing can go wrong’ and after checking out the very impressive testimonials on his website, decided this was the guy for me (big mistake).

I thought I’d check him out before doing anything, and visited his site. (always do that!).

One of the testimonials he had said “Your letter was very good. I had a very very good response - so far, about £25,000 worth of work.”

Others claimed the guy was a Genius etc etc, and I guess I got taken in by it all, which was painful being a professional salesman myself - but shows anybody can be taken in on the web. Ok, perhaps I’m being a bit unfair to the guy, as he wrote me a good press release and (had this verified by a top London PR Agency), it’s just I expected a certain amount of sales and assumed this carefully crafted letter would deliver at least 10 sales - NO WAY, I had not one sale from this letter, and it’s a mistake that I learnt so much from, and I’ll never make that error again.

The press release was fine, and as part of the deal he threw in some contacts, and did the telephone sales work on my behalf - this was a major huge bulls up, that taught me so much. Basically, I discovered his list of contacts, wasn’t a list of ‘his contacts’ at all - he just got the artists and writers yearbook and contacted a bunch of magazines from it, and passed them off as his own special contacts lol.

Now I’m used to and expect a little bravado, but these sales calls he made were totally the wrong publications to contact, as magazines are only interested in money, and won’t list a press release for free, so it’s pointless me even talking with any of them, as they just aren’t going to do it for me.

So getting sales with these 2 professionally designed works of art, was a big no no, and just had to put it down to inexperience, well maybe not inexperience of sales, but lack of it dealing with outside agencies. I should have done more research, and that was another mistake, which I regretted later. Oh well, at least the news release was ok, and it can be used - although I did lose £80, but guess this sometimes happens in business and was still impatient and learning as I went.

I then got thinking that maybe the sales letter was to blame, maybe my email list was at fault, so after checking the type of sites I was selling to, they seemed ok, I then considered I wasn’t contacting enough businesses to get the results. No problem, just increased my email list and stepped up the sales - which helped. I got 20 new clients, ahhhh - so that’s where I went wrong, it wasn’t the letter at all, still only 20 new clients? From 1000 plus emails? That’s not really that many hmmmmmm, but it’s how direct mail works as response is low.

But being the tenacious person I am, continued to contact and woo these lovely businesses, trying to charm the business from under their noses, and attempt to do something for them. But you can’t do that unless you get em as clients in the first place….. And many told me to get stuffed, oh boy I must of heard it all - I thought I heard a few swear words in my time, but some of these business owners had me down as some major spammer or devil or something. Sad in it!

It always amazes me (or not) how rude and plain dumb people can be, these folks simply had to ask me to be removed, I mean it’s that easy - but instead they waste time writing insulting emails to the very people that have shoved a freebie in their faces. - ho hum. One guy, sent me some mails as a revenge tactic for selling to him, and I honestly couldn’t recall dealing with him, so replied saying that I’d never heard of him and wasn’t interested. His reply was the first of a series of 20 emails, insulting me at every turn and trying to sue me etc etc - pure madness.

Another guy I sold to didn’t send me a reply, he chose to ring me at college and actually told me to P*** off, and that my directory was cough cough,. It was quite crushing actually, and this is why you need a very thick skin, as occasionally the insults will be fired at you, and in any business too. But I continued to do the sales.

Sales is time consuming, all literature has to be perfect and no one sales technique will generate all sales your business will need. Best results are from a combination.

 

Continued:


Encounter of the Bank Kind

Ok, so just to recap - got the site, set up to take payment, sales copy in place, SEO’d and even some PPC, oh and an advert in Yellow Pages. But when taking payments, this gets transferred to an account, which I needed to set up, so contacted WorldPay, who wanted a set up fee, and £800 per year - well no way was I going to pay that, so just accepted cheques, and went to my first bank to open an account.

‘Ok, this is important folks, so listen up. A bank will want proof of previous statements and account history so I showed them my paperwork, and they refused me flat. Why? Because I was overdrawn by £5 - bang, that was it, no account for me.

So approached a 2nd bank, removed the overdrawn statement, and replaced it with one that showed me in credit, and the clerk made the official appointment for me to see the Small Business Manager. I turned up with the evidence required, but - and here’s the catch, in order for me to have a proper business account, I had to purchase a business software pack - for which they charged me £200 (I couldn’t afford this), but was so impatient to get things moving, and release the stress I was under, I signed.

Now, here’s the thing, this manager basically said “If you don’t take the software, we can’t give you an account”, which is a little low if you ask me - and I signed. This was another mistake under pressure, and it’s so easy to do, so be careful as they play on your eagerness and panic you into signing up for all sorts of useless stuff.

Not only did it cost me money and get me into debt, I was led to believe this thing was a one-off fee, and it belonged to me once I’d paid. Thing is turned out to be a subscription that can only be activated once it’s loaded onto a PC - but couldn’t do that, as it wouldn’t run on my operating system.

I complained about this over the phone to banks head office, in person and by letter - it made no difference and was stuck with a useless piece of software that if I were to use, would set me back £200 every year. I was furious.

-- this is just some of the nasty things the big friendly banks will pull on you, so be careful what you sign and don’t be in a rush, until you have all the facts.

You see banks will say anything to you to get your money, they will bs you, lie, play big fancy speeches, coerce you, excessive flattery etc - ok, I’ve been there. I got my account in the end, but was an expensive lesson, further more the account has all manner of pricey charges attached to it, so yet another money making ploy.

Business accounts jeeze…..

Web designer troubles

Since the set up of this business, I had 3 web designers -1 cheap, 1 cheap, but no service value and my third - brilliant. The first guy was cheap, but charged me for every little thing and being on a restricted budget (as most start-ups are) is tough and didn’t need to be paying for every little alteration, and this site had cost me enough already, and I couldn’t go deeper anymore, so fired him. (got to be brutal guys!)

The 2nd chap, was okay, but started to get expensive the more I asked of him, and so ditched him. I’m saying that it takes a lot of hunting around until you find the right one for your business needs, and this is a minefield in itself, so I’ll cover this in another post sometime. But for now I will be concentrating on a specific problem that happened to me, which means it can happen to anybody.

Ok, I had a brainwave to add some content to the site in the form of helpful articles, so started writing and asking for articles to be written, by the time I had finished, I must have added maybe 500 articles to the site in about 3 months (I really went for it) - and it looked good, and even helped my traffic a bit.

Was going through the site one day, and noticed many of the articles missing, now I hadn’t removed them, as I certainly not deleting them after copying and pasting 300 of the buggers to the site! So had to be the designer, or someone that worked for him, so made my complaint and managed to get an incredible amount of free design work done, so that was cool. What amazed me was the content was removed without consulting with the client - ME. -- just another thing to add to the list of things going wrong when doing this web thing, but it happens so easily.

Infact it happened twice, and the only reason I didn’t fire him was his service is so good, and the fact he did a load of free work for me, saved him. And I didn’t want to go through the lengthy process of finding another designer - as finding this guy was a nightmare, the endless phone calls, waiting for them to make a decision if they had the capability to work for me, checking their experience, work rates, testimonials and portfolio etc etc - just trust me on that.

My advice is to check and double check on everything they do for you. Or they can just take over and start making the decisions for you. Thing is you really rely on them for the success of a site - it’s true, so you got to keep them sweet! But have no illusions - you are in-charge…….

Not them.