16 Sep 2006, Posted by Matthew Reinbold in Projects, 0 Comments
Online Business: Day 12
This is the twelfth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.
Yesterday was a very good day for the online marketing efforts. The ‘Day Against DRM’ tie in was very well received by multiple groups. Link spamming is absolutely wrong. However, if you are providing something of value or filling need people do respond. As of this Saturday morning (the 16th) that page had been dugg 16 times and was posted to the Defective by Design home page. In addition, the project was picked up by Lindsay writing for the official SpreadShirt blog. She was kind enough to not only describe the project and say some positive things about the designs but link multiple times to both MilitantGeek and BloomBurst. Traditionally Friday’s are low traffic points – people are busy getting work finished before the weekend, taking off early, and generally paying penance for surfing the web earlier in the week. The combination of those efforts caused a nice diversified stream of visitors. (Plot taken from Google Analytics for Friday, September 15th – it’s important to remember that these are only clicks on the MilitantGeek website; as I discussed earlier movement within the SpreadShirt shop isn’t currently being tracked.)
While there wasn’t much outward facing work done last evening I did have several very productive IM chats. It’s probably common sense to most, but one must always be cultivating feedback. I’ve been lucky enough to have met some really intelligent, approachable people in the last several months. I hope to be executing on some of the fantastic ideas that we collaborated on.
Finally, I can’t decide whether I should weed out some of the weaker designs. Because everything is digital the first thought is there is no cost for having extra inventory – just put everything online and eventually somebody in the long tail will buy that odd Tshirt. However, having those less impressive designs do carry a cost: they take up screen real estate. People do not like to scroll. I’d love to hear what people think about this – just leave everything there or keep the shop concise with the best designs? Let me know.
The numbers:
Day 12
Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 45
Number Sold: 1
Money Made: $5.59
Visits: 61
Pageviews: 190