FontStruct – Free Fridays #17

FontStruct is a fantastic application. It’s free and it focuses on one particular task well which means it fits all the criteria for inclusion in the Friday review, but that’s not why I’m writing about it here.

By deciding to take a punt and release FontStruct for free in the Spring of 2008, FontShop did something that exemplifies the web business model and the great benefits it brings when done right.

So first of all, what is FontStruct…

FontStruct is a web app that anyone (with the time) can use to create their own fonts. USers of the servic can download their fonts and make them available for others to use under the Creative Common license. It’s available at fontstruct.fontshop.com if you want to give it a go. Registration is free. This video says it all though.

Why is it so exemplary? What have they done?

Well by setting up a free product in parallel to their core business, they did some key things.

 

1. They did what they know and love. Fonts
2. They created a framework for User Generated Content.
3. They have gently integrated their paid products into the free product.

 

By a stroke of genius they brought their passion, fonts, to an even wider audience and made it accessible to anyone with a computer. By doing so they let people in to their world, made it fun, released new talent. They gave people a behind the scene look at what they and typographers do. That’s something we all take for granted and it turns out to be not so easy after all. In other words, they’ve brought us round to respecting what they do and have picked up new customers along the way.

They also had excellent timing. FontShop, the company behind FontStruct, specialises in selling catalogues of fonts. New fonts are going to become more and more important on the web as browsers start to move beyond the standard font families over the next few years due to the widespread introduction of font embedding. It’s not a bad time to be in the font business.

The buzz around this product when it launched was enormous and things like that can help attract good people to your company and boost morale internally.

As a business they could have settled for more traditional routes to increasing their sales such as affiliates, but the products they sell on their main site cost between  €169 and €13,200.00. Not really an impulse purchase.

By setting up a free product they can rapidly build up a new user base to whom they can promote their core business.

This is what the web is good for, but you have to be quick and you have to be good at it. Most of all, it seems that those that do best at it didn’t have pure profit in mond when they started out.

So sign up at at fontstruct.fontshop.com and have a go at creating your own font. It’s not as easy as you think.

Filed under: Free Fridays, Free Software, Promoting Your Website and Organisation

Alternatives to Replace Google AdSense Referrals Income

At the beginning of the month, Google announced that they would retire the referrals section of AdSense. For existing referral ad publishers, this means that any AdSense referral code will cease to generate income for them at the end of August.

It’s all part of Google’s restructuring after the merger with DoubleClick. Unlike previous changes to Google’s advertising plans, this hasn’t been met with a great deal of opposition from web publishers as it generated very little income for anyone.

But if you were using referrals ads to get your readers to sign up for things like Google software bundles or AdWords then you’ll soon have a bit of space freed up on your site and may be looking for alternative options to just adding another block of AdSense ads.

My Alternatives To AdSense Referrals

There are hundreds, if not thousands of different affiliate schemes out there and which one you choose will be dependent on the type of site that you run. I have a few monetised sites (oooh, don’t ya just hate that word) on the web and here are two advertising schemes that I use that have shown positive results so far.

The first is Widget Bucks. I’ve written about them in the past and if you are running a product based web site or technology focused site that has a lot of traffic from North America then this one is certainly worth a try. They produce very eye catching widgets that are simple to place on your web site and can be formatted to a whole range of sizes. The reason that I mention North American traffic is because their current payment model is pay per click for ads displayed to visitors in North American and per thousand impressions for visitors outside of the USA and Canada. [UPDATE, pay per click now extended to Europe]

Widget Bucks is starting to prove itself by making a small a daily income for me, but not not in the way I first expected. The bulk of my income from them has actually been created as trickle down referral income from ads placed on other people sites. When you display ads on your site, there is a small tag-line which promotes the service and anyone who signs up via this link then becomes one of your referred customers and you receive 5% of what they earn for 12 months. The 5% comes from Widget Bucks not from the person placing ads on their site so their income is not reduced.

You have two options for placing ads. You can either select a category of ads such as laptops, cameras, GPS accessories etc or just go down the contextual route and let Widget Bucks figure out what ads to place based upon your content.

WOOthemes WordPress Theme Club

The second suggestion is a new site called WOOthemes which is backed by some very well know designers and I’ve included it in this post because although it is very new, it has shown very good click through rates so far and it looks very promising.

WOO is run a WordPress theme club, offering access to a selection of really top notch WordPress themes for between $150 and $375 dollars depending on the length of your subscription. When you sign up to the club, you receive all of the current themes and they guarantee at least one new theme every month.

The themes come with good documentation and they are created by well know designers who have good reputations to maintain so the standard of the themes should remain consistently high.

Affiliates receive 20% of any new sign-ups, but the real strength of the scheme is in the opportunity to earn continuing fees from people that renew their subscriptions.

So if you have been using AdSense’s referral products there are plenty of good alternatives out there and you may as well start replacing your referrals codes before they are retired in a few weeks.

Finally, if you have been using AdSense referrals and the data is important to you then make sure you download the report information after you replace your ads as the referrals potion of AdSense reporting will no longer be available from October.

Filed under: How To Manage A Website, Online Advertising, Promoting Your Website and Organisation, Reviews, WidgetBucks , adsense, advertising, referrals, themes, WidgetBucks, woo, wordpress

4Q Free Web Visitor Survey – Free Fridays #12

This weeks (yes, I know it’s been a few weeks) free software is an online survey tool that enables you to collect opinions on what people think about your web site.

It’s very easy to implement, it’s very easy for the visitor to use, it’s free and it’ll provide you with invaluable feedback that can make a real difference in improving your web site.

4Q is provided by Avinash Kaushik of the Occam’s Razor blog and Web Analtyics fame and a company called iperceptions.com. You can sign up at 4q.iperceptions.com but let me explain a little about how it works first.

What Does 4Q Do?

The survey take about 10 minutes to set up and most of that time is spent waiting for the account activation email to arrive.

It’s based on four key questions that look at why people have visited your site and if they found what they were looking for or managed to achieve what they set out to do.

When a visitor enters your website, they are asked of they want to complete a quick survey when they have finished their visit. If they say yes, they can carry on and when they finish browsing, the survey is there for them to complete. If they say no, they won’t hear about they survey again.

You can switch the survey on and off at any time and you can also set it so that it only asks a certain number of visitors e.g. every 5th person etc.

To see an example of the survey in action, visit www.webglossary.co.uk and answer yes to doing the survey. Don’t worry about how you answer the questions, this is just a test site that I’m running the survey on.

Four Key Questions

Your visitor survey will ask people four key questions after they have visited your site and close their browser.

These are basically:

1. Why are you here?
2. Was it successful?
3. If not why not?
4. Were you satisfied?

These are the essential questions that will give you insight in to why people actually visit your web site and whether or not they were happy with the visit. This is the kind of information that normal web analytics cannot provide.

For example, imagine someone comes to your web site and looking to join your organisation. They might look on half a dozen pages on your website, then give up looking and go away. Web analytics can show you that the person arrive via a search engine, stayed for 4 minutes and looked at 6 pages. That could be regarded as a good visit. But the fact that they didn’t find what they were looking for makes it an unsuccessful visit.

Conversely, someone could come to your site looking for your phone number, visit the home page, stay for 10 seconds and write down you phone number. In terms of web analytics that could be deemed an unsuccessful visit. They didn’t stay and the results will show a 100% bounce rate for that visitor. But they left because they had found what they wanted.

This is why the good old Customer Satisfaction Survey is still necessary and 4Q enables you to easily implement one.

Setting Up 4Q

When you create your survey you just have to choose some options from a list of pre-made answers for question 1. These include things like, “Ask An Expert”, “Compare Products”, “Research” etc.

Once you’ve made those choices, you save your survey and receive access to one line of code which you can either drop into the footer of your website code or add to one particular page.

If you don’t maintain your own web site you can just email the code to your designer and they can very quickly add it to your web site.

It’s very easy to do and the breakdown of the results is very user friendly as well.

Filed under: Free Fridays, Free Software, How To Manage A Website, Information Management, Promoting Your Website and Organisation, Web Analytics , 4q, online surveys, surveys

Check Then Check Again Before You Publish

Okay, this is a bit of a case of the pot calling the kettle black, as I often post quickly to this blog and don’t check spellings and grammar as thoroughly as I should. But for me, this blog is an experiment. It’s my blog, it reflects on me and me alone and I take any flack for any mistakes. My approach to client work is of course very different. When dealing with other people’s work you’re responsible for their image and reputation and therefore need to put appropriate checks in place before publishing work.

So anyway, back to the point. I came across a perfect example of a lost opportunity the other day that could have so easily been avoided.

A sports club that is clearly on a recruitment drive, managed to get a busy news web site to publish their press release calling for new members.

“What a coup”, I thought, “They should do well out of that.”

Filed under: How To Manage A Website, Promoting Your Website and Organisation

Plugg Start Up Awards – One Week Left

Registration for the Plugg Start-Up of the Year Award 2008 closes on Friday the 8th of February. If you’ve recently started a European web venture, you’ve got one week left to enter.

So get your skates on.

As if you don’t already have enough on your plate starting up a new venture!

Full details of the awards and the conference can be found at plugg.eu/start-ups-rally.

Filed under: Benelux, Promoting Your Website and Organisation , awards, belgian web, brussels, european web, plugg, start-ups

Internet Startup Awards 2008 – Plugg Brussels Opens Registration

Plugg – A European Perspective On Web 2.0 – is a one day conference focussing on European internet startups which takes place in Brussels on the 18th of March.

Plugg Startup of the Year Award 2008

In addition to the usual conference format of speakers and networking opportunities, they are including a Startups Rally and are calling for internet start-up companies to to submit their company profile for an opportunity to promote their new companies at the conference.

The deadline for submitting your company to the competition is Friday the 8th of February so you still have some time, but get your skates on. And it’s free, so you have nothing to lose!

If your entry is successful, you will be one of 20 other start-ups that have the chance to do a
a 2-minute pitch on stage to the conference delegates and speakers.

Three will then be selected to deliver a more detailed 10-minute pitch to the audience in the afternoon session. Of course, only one company can win the Startup of the Year Award, but it’s a good opportunity for all of the companies involved to raise their profile.

The first 50 companies to register will receive a free 25 € voucher from the conference sponsor Brabo Ventures / Gate2Growth which they can use to get an expert opinion on their business plan using the G2G business assesment tool.

Go for it and good luck!

Full details of the conference, organised by Robin Wauters, is available at www.plugg.eu

Filed under: Benelux, How To Manage A Website, Information Management, Online Advertising, Promoting Your Website and Organisation , plugg, brussels, conferences, bruxelles, brussel, european, europe, web 2.0, business plan, start-ups, awards, web awards, startups