Any new projects will now be automatically Tweeted by WebEquity.

The WebEquity project has now come full circle with the release of the first end-to-end project, http://blipt.com/

blipt.com offers a cash incentive for referring badly designed websites or under-utilised domain names. The idea is to provide website owners with objective feedback about problems with their sites that might otherwise go unreported. They then have the choice to fix the problem, sell the business, or, of course, ignore the advice.

If the owner decides to engage commercially, either to fix or sell the website, the referrer of the website could be paid a finders fee of up to AU$1000.

In order to make referring a website as simple as possible, founder Paul Middleton has developed buttons for both the Google Toolbar and Firefox that refer the current page URL with a single click. The referrer completes the referral form with their email address, plus a brief description of what the problem is (this is optional, but the more detail that’s provided, the more likely the referral will result in something), and the rest is up to blipt.com.

The idea isn’t to create bounty hunters, scouring the web for badly designed sites. Once you’ve installed the toolbar button, it just sits there until, in a week, month or year’s time, you come across a website that needs some help.

It is hoped that the project will keep WebEquity members busy with new projects for some time to come.

More information is available at the blipt.com website.

I sent this person an email ‘thanking’ him for spamming the community, telling him that I thought most of the members would have binned the email before reading it, and most would have lowered their perception of his business for so obviously abusing the system.

Anyway, it wasn’t an automatically generated spam mail – he went through every member individually and sent them the email, which I’m hoping will act as a deterrent to most spammers.

The site is a public forum, and anyone can register. The whole point of the site is to promote communication between parties that might be able to collaborate, so this is something that I hadn’t expected (maybe I’m naive), but I’ve been thinking about how to address this issue and I’m going to implement some changes.

Firstly, you’ll be able to specify if you’re willing to receive email communications from the site via your profile page or not. This will prevent people from directly contacting you to promote their own businesses, but will also unfortunately prevent people from contacting you legitimately, too.

The second change will be to restrict access to the mail-out facility to only those people who have specifically requested access to this feature for what I consider a legitimate reason. Of course, if you’ve posted a project, any registrant will still be able to contact you.

 I’ve disabled direct mailings from the profile page until I implement these changes.

I should reassure you, when people use this system your email address isn’t exposed at any time, so you can’t be added to a mailing list unless you respond. Also, this guy apparently believed he was doing nothing wrong. I suspect that he knew exactly what he was doing, and knew that he was abusing the site and community by directly promoting his own business. He claims to have received a number of positive emails from community members, and has joined the community himself.

If you have any other suggestions as to how I can reduce the likelihood of this happening again, whilst retaining the basic functionality of the site, please let me know.

Apologies to everyone that was inconvenienced by this incident.

Apologies if you’ve been wondering why the feed wasn’t updating.

–
Paul
WebEquity.org

• Do you need a scripting technology?
  Scripting is most commonly used to access a database. If you need to store information of any kind, you’ll need a database, and you’ll need to choose a scripting language to access that information. Your developer should be able to help with this information.
• Will you need a database?
  Related to the previous question, your need for a database will be based on whether you need to store information. Very few commercial websites created today will be pure HTML, without a requirement for a database.
• How many visitors per minute/hour/day are you expecting?
  This question will allow the hostng company to determine whether a shared hosting environment (where you share a single server with other websites) will provide sufficient resources for your website, or whether you’ll need a server to yourself (aka ‘dedicated server’)
• Will you be managing the server(s) yourself?
  If you need a dedicated server, do you have the skills to manage the server yourself, or will you pay extra for the hosting company to do this for you. This is normally limited to keeping the server software up-to-date and performing other routine maintenance.
• Will you be storing customer’s personal information?
  If you’re asking customers to provide personal information and storing that in your database there may be a need to extra security, for example secure (SSL) certificates. This may affect the service offered.
• Are you likely to add more than one website to your server?
  If this is the first in a number of online businesses, it may pay to plan ahead and commission a server that can handle more than one website.

There are doubtless others that I’ve missed, but I wanted to get these down before I forgot them.

–
Paul
http://webequity.org/

You have the idea and business plan, and WebEquity has the resources to make that a reality and [hopefully] elevate you from the rat race, but the thought of engaging with an army of techys to create your business gives you the chills. This document is intended to give you a heads-up as to what’s required when creating your online business.

Business plan

No matter how small, your venture should start with a comprehensive plan that will typically include information on the following:

• the goals of the business
• details of the business management
• the marketing plan
• operational details
• the financial plan
• a step-by-step plan of action

There are numerous resources available online for creating a business plan, and they are largely applicable to any country. In Australia, check ou the NSW Department of State and Regional Development’s Guide to Business Planning for more information.

As well as providing information for financiers, contributors and others, your business plan will help you clarify in your own mind exactly what you’re trying to do and how you intend on doing it. The plan isn’t written in stone, either, and is likely to change as your ideas mature.

Choosing a name

With an internet business, choosing a name means choosing a domain name. It doesn’t really matter what the business or company name is – it’s the domain name that will count long-term. Your choice of name may reflect the type of business, but it’s not compulsory, and you should bear the following in mind:

• Choose a name that’s not going to be confused with someone else, especially if it’s a potential competitor. Apart from the obvious ethical problem, and the possibility of legal action against you, in practical terms, as your business grows your competitor might benefit from the confusion more than you.
• Whilst a generic name might appeal for search engine optimisation purposes, building a brand around a generic term is very difficult and it’s almost impossible to protect the name against (ab)use by your competitors. You don’t want them to benefit from your hard work raising awareness of your new product or service. On the other hand…
• Consider the search engine ‘friendliness’ of your domain name. If your new business is selling digital cameras, for example, try to include that term in the name. If you’re providing a dating service, some reference to ‘dating’ within the name will help the search engines identify what your site is about, and every link to the site will help re-enforce that. For more information, you are strongly recommended to speak to someone with search engine optimisation (SEO) skills.
• Short is sweet. Keeping the name as short as possible will have significant benefits. Whether you’re going to rely on people to type the name, or on printed advertising, having a short name is easier to remember and inter-site links won’t be so obtrusive.

It is advisable to register your name before you set out on recruiting your development team, and never publicise a name you intend using that is unregistered.

Creating your WebEquity project profile

Once you have your business plan and a name, you can start recruiting help from your local WebEquity community. As well as building your business development team, posting your project will help you in a number of other ways, too.

You need to create interest in the project, but you don’t want to give the whole game away in case someone decides to develop your idea themselves! Remember to keep any proprietary information or technology, or unique selling points, to yourself whilst making sure people know they exist and just how fantastic they are! If you’ve sold the concept as well as you can and you receive little or no interest, it might be indicative of the response the idea will generate generally. Review your project profile; maybe adopting a different approach will result in more interest, and this could be invaluable feedback in creating your public marketing plan. Conversely, if people are falling over themselves to join your team, you know you’re probably on a winner. Congratulations.

When creating the project detail, try to include at least the following details, even if you say that they’re not yet finalised:

• Hosting – has this been arranged? Who with? What operating system? Do you require someone to host the site for you?
• Design – do you require someone to provide the website design?
• Development – do you require someone to create the website?

Hosting the site

Websites are stored on high-performance computers called servers. Most websites are stored on servers held at web hosting companies, so you don’t have to purchase and maintain your own server. Web hosting companies offer different levels of service designed to cater for websites of all types and popularities. The key differences between services are the operating system (typically Unix or Windows), and this normally determine the technology available to the website developer (Unix = PHP scripting and MySQL database; Windows = ASP/.NET and MS-SQL).

Hosting can be expensive (particularly in Australia). Bear the following points in mind when selecting your web hosting company:

• The hosting company needn’t be local to you – the internet is global, and so are the services
• If you decide to go with an overseas host, remember that their hours of operation might be outside of your normal working hours. Although most hosting companies will offer 24hr support, it may be reduced during peak times in your time zone. There is also the potential that any ‘out-of-hours’ maintenance is planned for your peak times because of the time differences.
• Don’t over pay for optional extras that you don’t need, but make sure you discuss scaleability when setting up. You don’t want to be paying for expensive bandwidth and capacity that isn’t going to be required for months or years, but make sure there is a clear path for upgrading as your website grows in popularity. Upgrading your service or commissioning a new server can normally be done very quickly, so don’t waste money unnecessarily if you don’t have to.
• Your choice of server/service might limit the technology available to create your website. Unless you have a server in place already, it is advisable to speak to the developers that might work on the project before spending money on a server. Different website developers prefer different languages and operating systems. What’s important is the final result – not how’s it’s achieved – so discuss hosting with your developers, too. They might have a server that can be used for developement and testing before launching the website, which will help save more money, too.

Engaging other WebEquity members

Different people have different attitudes towards protecting their intellectual property and working within legal agreements generally, but you are advised to ask any potential contributor to sign a non-disclosure/confidentiality agreement before giving out your world-beating product secrets. A handy confidentiality agreement generator (and other tools) is available from the Australian government’s IP Australia website. Even with this agreement signed, however, it’s still best to limit information to a ‘need to know’ basis until you’re comfortable that the other person is fully committed to the project. If you’re working with multiple contributors, limiting the information that each is given will help protect against any one of them developing the idea themselves.

Personally, I try to get confidentiality agreements signed whenever possible, but I rely more on my gut instinct so try to meet project contributors face-to-face before providing any detailed information. Fortunately, I’ve not yet had to take legal measures to enforce an agreement, but I view them more as a deterrent than as real protection for my ideas. If someone is so unscrupulous as to run off with an idea even when offered a cut of the equity or revenue, they’re likely to it whether you have a confidentiality agreement in place or not.

In terms of the amount of revenue or equity you’re willing to share… that’s another matter for negotiation between yourself and the contributor, but here’s some pointers to open the discussion:

• how much time is likely to be required?
• what would that normally cost at the contibutor’s standard rates?
• what are the revenue expectations of the project?
• is equity or revenue or both on offer?
• how important is the contributor to the final product?
• how much competition exists for a spot on the team?
• equity sharing is for the lifetime of the project; but how long would you like any revenue sharing agreement to exist?
• what if the contribution (e.g. a page design) is superceded?
• what if the project fails? Is a compensatory payment expected/available?
• who owns the intellectual property rights of the contribution?
• what are the timescales for the project?

Summary

I’ve tried to highlight the key pointers for non-technical people to create a successful online venture. This is essentially the same if you’re engaging others on a revenue/equity sharing basis or if you’re paying for their time/contribution directly. The difference working with WebEquity members provides is that they’re willing to invest time and effort to work on projects they believe in, in return for a share of the resultant success, rather than being paid to work on any available project. They have a vested interest in the success of the project, and their work attitude should reflect that.

Traffichawk is a live feed of traffic problems combining Google maps and feed data from the RTA. Unfortunately, there weren’t any reported problems on the roads when I looked, so I couldn’t see the system in full swing, but the demo looked good, at least Of the three, I’d say this has the most mainstream appeal.

Linkviz provides a visual depiction of the popularity of links posted on Twitter. The larger the image, the more popular the link. Nicely put together, but I’m not sure if it’s something I’d use personally. Broad adoption will also be limited by the fact that the service is not available on internet explorer. I’m assuming this was to focus efforts on one browser due to the time constraints.

uT.ag was the most popular application on the night and caused quite a stir because it provides a system for monetizing outbound links on blogs/websites. It does this by framing the link destination page and adding an advertising bar at the top of the page. The person that clicks the link still gets the content, but with an unobtrusive AdSense bar at the top. All you need to start using the system is a PayPal account. Most of the links on this page are uT.ag’d, so if you’d like to see what a page looks like, just click.

uT.ag is available in two forms. A ‘tinyURL’ style link generator will transform individual links into uT.ags. There is also a snippet of Javascript code you can add to your webpages to transform tags across a whole page on the fly. However, my tests showed up what I think is a bug where page text of the form ‘www.yoursite.com’ is translated to a ut.ag link at the text and href level, which makes a bit of a mess of the page content. I’ve let them know. Hopefully this will be a quick fix.

Another problem appears with the PayPal link above. I’m not sure what they do, but it appears they reload the page, and that kills the uT.ag ad bar. It’s the only site I’ve come across that does this, but I wonder if some site owners will implement uT.ag killing refreshes to prevent their pages being shown with ads at the top? What would Google think, for example, of someone presenting the Google homepage with AdWords ads at the top?

I have to say, despite initial skepticism and these small teething problems, I am thoroughly addicted to uT.ag’ing. I thought that manually tagging all links in a blog post would be a real drag, but it’s actually not that bad…no different to converting to tinyURLs, anyway, and it’s sweetened by the potential of earning money for your efforts. Congratulations to Kim (TechNation), David, Matt, Nick and Hugo…just remember the little people

The next step for the three teams is a pitch tomorrow morning, presumably to someone within the Geekdom/Photon organistion, who have hosted the event…hey, this uT.ag’ing is very addictive! Can’t wait for the WordPress plugin.

As an example of what can be achieved with a bit of collaboration, this surely can’t be beaten. In 24 hours, 3 teams have created 3 new startups. Well done and good luck to all teams.

StartupCamp is the brainchild of Bart Jellema, founder of tjoos.com and www.startup-australia.org. More information on the event can be found on the Silicon Beach Google Group page. At the post-launch after-party tonight, Bart confirmed that there are likely to be more StartupCamps in the near future, perhaps in other cities, too.

–
Paul
http://webequity.org/

Sitepoint.com is a very popular tech blog, primarily targeting web developers and designers, and the post caused a bit of a flurry of activity on the WebEquity site, including the first registrations for the US and UK communities. Thanks guys…come on Canada!

I haven’t really started promoting the international communities, yet, so it’s great to see that there are people in the other regions that understand and support the concept. Josh was on my distribution list following an article he posted shortly after the launch of WebEquity, and is one of only two non-Australian contacts on my media release list (the other being .net magazine in the UK).

If you know of any more blogs, websites or magazines that you think would be interested in the WebEquity community (in any region), please let me know, or, better still…drop them a line telling them why you think they should mention it.

Thanks again, Josh. Appreciate your support.

–
Paul
WebEquity.org

I’m not entirely sure what WebEquity needs a blog for, but it seemed like a good idea anyway.

To bring you up to speed…WebEquity is a community website I created at the start of August 2008 to publicise my web business ideas with the aim of recruiting developers to work on them on an equity and/or revenue sharing basis. These aren’t just “wouldn’t it be good” type ideas…they are typically ideas that have a solid business plan and good revenue potential, I just don’t have the time to develop them myself.

If you have web business development skills (techy or otherwise) you register on the site (for free), which allows you to contact any of the project originators to get involved in their projects. If you have an idea for a web business, you register (again, for free) and post the project online and interested community members contact you.

The site was originally launched in Australia, but I’ve expanded the site to include communities in Canada, the UK and the US. I believe in regionalisation as one of the aims of WebEquity was to stimulate local interactions. There’s nothing preventing anyone contacting community members from another region, though.

The site has attracted around 160 members to date, and roughly 12 projects have been posted. I’ve been very impressed by the quality of both the projects and the community members. The site already boasts a broad range of skills and experience that would benefit many online business projects.

The aim now is to broaden the reach of WebEquity by publicising the international communities, and also to create some feedback about project successes…ah-ha!…that’s why I needed the blog!

–
Paul
WebEquity.org