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How to live like a king

February 12, 2009 By James Quinn-Hawtin Leave a Comment

Artistic, fashion and travel photographer Ben Heys lives like a king. Highly respected in photography circles for his artistic nude and fashion photography, Ben makes his entire income online by licensing his photography to designers.

This is called “stock” photography and he currently has 1300 images available in his Shutterstock.com library.  Each photo is licensed for a lean amount of money – and his commission is even smaller – but the numbers add up to provide a consistent flow of passive income sufficient to live like a king while he travels Asia. Even when he doesn’t work for weeks at a time.

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Filed Under: Business, Travel and Life Tagged With: Ben Heys, make money online, Micro-stock, Stock Photography

Ten things you must know about your website

December 5, 2008 By James Quinn-Hawtin Leave a Comment

Any serious shop owner will know: how many people enter the shop; the conversion rate; the minimum number of shoppers needed to break even; which promotions worked; which promotions tanked; what the competition is doing; and, when more staff need to be hired for busy times.

Whether you sell jeans, make jewellery, design offices or coach executives, your website is your virtual shop front. Just like a real shop front or office it must be properly managed, maintained and regularly evaluated.

Here are ten questions about your website (and email marketing) that are critical to your online success:

  1. How many people visit your website every month/week/day?
  2. How do they find your website? (if they came from a search engine, what keywords did they search for?)
  3. Why are they visiting?
  4. Which visitors are converting the best (and/or staying the longest) and why?
  5. When was the last time you updated the website?
  6. If your web designer disappears tomorrow (it happens!) do you have up-to-date Control Panel, FTP, Domain Name Management and Content Management System access details so that you can hand it over to a new web designer?
  7. How many people downloaded your ebook and/or signed up to your newsletter/articles last week?
  8. When you send out an email campaign, what is your average open rate? Which topics and subject lines produce the best open rates?
  9. For what keywords has your website been optimised? (Are you using these when writing new content?)
  10. How does your website compare against your competitors’? What are they doing that you can learn from?

Most business owners and managers with whom I talk can answer, at best, three of the above.  Bail up your web designer or website manager and ensure that you have access to the necessary statistics.  If in doubt, take me up on my free consultation offer.

Christmas is getting close!  What is Santa bringing you?

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: conversion, Email Marketing, promotions, statistics

Wotif.com’s Ten Steps to Online Success

November 20, 2008 By James Quinn-Hawtin Leave a Comment

A month or so ago Graeme Wood, the co-founder of the immensely successful wotif.com, delivered a guest lecture to my E-Commerce students on the topic “Ten Steps to Online Success”.

He discussed with us his experience of coming up with an innovative idea, prototyping it, and seeing it through to the thriving, global business that it is now.  A business generating, last year, a profit of $34.5 Million (source).

Below is a summary of the questions that he believes must be answered in creating a successful business and some tid bits of wisdom that ressonated with me.  If you’re serious about starting or developing a business – online or offline – you might find yourself having a few “ah-ha” moments if you get out pen and paper and start answering the questions.  I did.

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Filed Under: Business Tagged With: Online Business, success, wotif

Three dumb mistakes from which to learn

November 15, 2008 By James Quinn-Hawtin Leave a Comment

Last night, after a long but exhilarating day, I was sitting in a wonderful steak restaurant in Newtown, Sydney.

I caught the manager’s eye as I took a seat at a table next to an open window that let in a refreshing breeze.

The manager waited on me at once.  I could see in his face the love for his job as he expertly made me feel at home.

My medium-rare ribeye came out soon after my perfectly suited Shiraz Cabernet and I devoured my meal.  Every once in a while the manager or another staff member would check in to see if I was happy with everything.  I was.

My table was cleared as soon as I’d finished my meal and the bill was delivered to my table upon my request.  The price was by no means outrageous and I was happy to even leave a tip.

So what did they do wrong?

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Filed Under: Business Tagged With: business cards, Marketing, Testimonials, website

Don’t read this email. No, don’t! Stop! Don’t click!

November 15, 2008 By James Quinn-Hawtin 1 Comment

Many of my clients are beginning to follow my lead in sending out regular correspondence to their existing customers and their prospects. The motivation is not so much to “sell, sell, sell!” but to cultivate genuine relationships over a period of time by providing their readers with useful and interesting information.

One of the challenges involved in email marketing, however, is getting people to open the email. We average a respectable 45% open rate for our mailouts but every now and then dip down into the 30′s or shoot above 50%. I find it interesting to analyse the statistics that our software gives us to identify what subject lines produce spikes in our open rate and which ones result in slumps.

While you may think that any mention of ‘sex’ would result in spam filters going out of their way to block an email, our August email ‘Who is the Sexiest Web Designer?’ resulted in 54% of our list opening the email – our highest ever.

The suggestive ‘”We shouldn’t be this excited about a website! Its wrong isn’t it?….”‘ the week prior managed 52% and the drama-filled ‘How I saved my reputation with one click (a useful tip for the future)’ was opened by 53%.

Conversely, the mention of email spam in the subject ‘Wasting time sorting through email spam? We’ve got the solution’ resulted in our second biggest slump at 35% and the ernest, but long, subject line ‘An outrageously simple way to track the success of your advertising (9 out of 10 advertisers don’t do it!)’ has been awarded, so far, only 33% (tragically, I consider this one of the most important and useful free bits of advice I’ve sent out).

So what works? Subject lines with a bit of fun, sass, sex-appeal or drama seem to work best. Topics that seem too boring, too serious or sales-oriented seem to get trashed. Don’t expect anyone to open an email entitled, simply, ‘Newsletter’!

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: E-Mail Marketing, Email Marketing

An outrageously simple way to track the success of your advertising (9 out of 10 advertisers don’t do it!)

October 9, 2008 By James Quinn-Hawtin Leave a Comment

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Half my advertising works, I just don’t know which half”

I was flipping through one of Brisbane’s free publications, MAP Magazine, and noticed with some surprise that only one of the 67 paid ads was definitely using a basic, accurate and potentially cost-free method of tracking its success.

I don’t know about you, but if I were to spend money on advertising (or any promotional campaign – including flyer distribution and radio spots) I’d want to know if it’s working or not.  Not only that but I’d want some definite numbers so that I can compare various different marketing efforts to determine which are working better than others.

To my eye, in this particular issue of MAP Magazine, there were:

  • 17 paid ads with no website link at all
  • 50 paid ads with a website link
  • over 81 editorial links
  • 2 Bigpond email addresses (instead of professional looking myname@companyname.com addresses)
  • 1 paid ad with a website link with “Coming soon” written next to it
  • 1 paid ad with a link to a MySpace profile (*rolls eyes*)
  • 1 paid ad that clearly had a method for tracking the ad’s success
  • 2 paid ads that might have been trackable

Imagine that you manage a shop in the Valley that sells sunglasses and you run, within the space of a few months, an advertisement in five different publications and you do flyer distribution in three different localities.

You include your phone number and physical address in the ads and flyers.  You also have the presence of mind to instruct your shop staff to [casually] survey callers and visitors as to how they came by your shop (and have some incentive to ensure they don’t forget!).

You’ve also included your website address on all five advertisements and flyers.  Let’s say it’s www.mysunglassesshop.com.

During those months you see an improvement in traffic coming to your site but you have no idea which ads or flyers are bringing you the traffic.  What a bummer!

This is what you can do next time:

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Filed Under: Business Tagged With: advertising, tracking

The Almost Breathless Question

October 3, 2008 By James Quinn-Hawtin Leave a Comment

What do you do?

My personal trainers at Best Practice, Anthony and Jeames, are both as passionate about e-commerce (or “online business”) as I am so we have a lot to talk about once they’ve put me through my paces on a Tuesday and Friday morning.

Anthony and I have been talking, for a while, about how to answer the question, “What do you do?”  Up until recently my uninspiring answer has been, “I make websites.”

While it is a concise description of the end-product of a typical project here at Webnerd, it does nothing to explain how we differ from every other Joe who makes websites, nor does it inspire any further discussion on the topic.

So Anthony and I have given it some thought and come up with the following response:

“I help businesses to understand and then implement the power of the Internet to increase their profits.”

You then, almost breathlessly, ask, “How do you do this, James?”

And from there a conversation may bloom.

Well, hopefully!  I’ll give it a go and make tweaks as necessary.

How do you reply when someone asks you, “What do you do?”  Is it compelling and does it inspire conversation?

Let me ask you something else:  is the answer to this question conveyed in a concise and compelling way on the front page of your website?

Go ahead and check right now :)

Wishing you happiness and success in your online and offline endeavours

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: Business Networking, E-Commerce, Online Business

10 of the Coolest E-Commerce Sites

September 29, 2008 By James Quinn-Hawtin 3 Comments

As part of my job teaching E-Commerce at QUT’s Faculty of Information Technology I get to spend time investigating interesting and inspirational (okay, “COOL!”) E-commerce websites. It’s not unusual that, in the course of teaching, my students show me things that I’ve never seen before, too.

The following is a list of ten of the coolest E-Commerce sites that I’ve seen, some have been introduced to me just this year by some of my students. In sharing these with you I imagine that perhaps you will discover something new that is useful to you and/or something that will spark some thinking about what you could do to leverage the Web to streamline your business processes and/or to make more money!

Animoto (animoto.com)

Upload photos, select one of the songs from the library (or upload your own) and hit the button. It will do the rest. Using some clever analysis and randomising algorithms it will create a video clip using your photos and the music selected.

How they make money: You can play with Animoto for free and produce 15 second video clips. To get full-length video clips you have to pay a small annual membership fee. DVD quality costs a little more again. Commercial usage requires purchasing a commercial license.


Basecamp (basecamphq.com)

Basecamp is an online project management and collaboration tool. The company that created it, 37 Signals, has a philosophy of keeping software and interfaces as simple as possible.

How they make money: There is a free 30-day trial that will allow you a taste of the service. After that you can choose from three different monthly plans.


Blurb (blurb.com)

Download Blurb’s book-designing software and you’ll be designing your first photography/keep-sake book in minutes

How they make money: Once you’ve designed your book you can submit it to them, select your book finishing options, and they’ll create and ship the book to you.


[Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: animoto, basecamp, blurb, click business cards, E-Commerce, etsy, facebook, freshbooks, istockphoto, pistal clothing, whereis

Wasting time sorting through spam?

September 12, 2008 By James Quinn-Hawtin Leave a Comment
SpamHow much time are you and your staff wasting on spam every month? What is that costing you? If you’re like me you receive over 100 emails per day – and well over half will be junk from people you’ve never before met trying to sell you something pretty dodgy. It’s frustrating, isn’t it? “Nearly 80 percent of e-mails sent worldwide are spam, and research has shown that junk communications can cost billions – and not just because companies have to buy extra computer capacity to cope with the influx of e-mails. The time employees spend deleting junk e-mail costs companies nearly $22 billion a year…” [Source] According to a survey commissioned by McAfee, 49% of Americans spend more than 40 minutes per week deleting spam. 14% report that they spend as much as 3.5 hours per week. [Source] I was recently contacted by the daughter of a gentleman on this mailing list because, probably like you, she’d had enough of spam.  Of well over 100 emails per day, the vast majority would be the aforementioned… annoyance. She wanted a solution whereby the spam would be wiped out before it even reached her computer.  That way there was no need for her to use any spam filtering software on her computer. We moved her website and email accounts to Webnerd and enabled our complimentary spam-filtering service for her.  Apart from some slight changes to her staff’s email settings, the move was uneventful and seamless.  The website experienced no downtime at all. Yesterday, a total of around 140 emails arrived at our mail server for Andra’s email account.  Our spam filter identified 95 (70%) as being spam and deleted them.  She was left with a much more managable 45 emails for the day. You are far too busy doing business to be worrying about spam.  But I also appreciate that you’re too busy to be thinking about moving your website and email accounts to a new provider – even if it is Webnerd. To make it worth your while I will move your website and email accounts to our server for free.  We’ll do all the work.  Then we will: filter all the spam that we can detect; check your incoming email for viruses; do all the work and shoulder the worry to ensure that your website is online at least 99.9% of the time; and we can even set up clever stuff like automatically copying your incoming email to your Blackberry. Our new hosting plans start at only $27/month (inc GST). Outsource your website and email hosting worries to us. Email or call now for a no obligation consultation so that we can tailor a solution to you. Testimonial from Andra:
“Spam was driving me crazy.  My previous web host was unable to offer any explanation or solution to the copious amounts of spam I was receiving.  Meanwhile, my busy consulting business was suffering as it was taking anywhere up to half an hour at times to download hundreds of spam email every day.  Not to mention, I was sick of how obscene most of the spam was.  I contacted James at WebNerd and he was able to offer an analysis of how much spam I was receiving and an immediate solution, whereby spam was stopped at the server, rather than being downloaded into my Outlook inbox.  It was simple and straightforward and has been an enormous relief.” — Andra Bite, Andra Bite Consulting
Filed Under: Business Tagged With: email hosting, Spam, web hosting

“Would you like $54,000 passive income with that?”

September 4, 2008 By James Quinn-Hawtin Leave a Comment

** Thank you to those generous people who sponsored me in the “Hike for the Homeless” walk last week.  I am told that $6,263 was receipted (with more dribbling in).  This money is being used to pay for the running of the 139 Club, a drop-in centre offering support for people in adverse personal situations. **

MoneyHave you ever thought to yourself, “If everyone in Australia gave me a paltry $1, I’d be a multi-millionaire”?

It might have then occurred to you that you don’t really need $20 million dollars.  So you fantasise: “If even only 52,000 gave me a paltry $1 per year I’d have $1000/week to easily pay the bills… and then some.”

The logistics of collecting $1 from 52,000 people might be a little daunting at this point but you might starting thinking that this is starting to enter the realms of possibility with a little extra thought.

So then you think: “Okay, I might be able to convince the average person or business to part with $30/month (or $1/day) for something they’re interested in or need.  If I had 150 customers I’d generate $54,000 per year!”

150 x $30 x 12 = $54,000Then the complexities of income verses profit come into it and you might decide that you actually need $30/month in profit.  No problem, really.  Just something to factor in.

Do you think that you could find 150 customers to pay you a little over $30/month for something they want or need? Perhaps an online service with no physical component? It could be an online course, membership site or some other Internet-based service like online survey hosting. Or maybe an online shop selling physical products (with a $30 profit margin) on a subscription model.

We’re talking pretty small numbers here (150 and $30) but, through the magic of primary school level multiplication, it adds up very quickly.  (And, consider that the number of customers required plummets to 50 if you generate $90/month profit per client.)

Come on, stop imagining that this is too hard and give it a bit of thought.  What do you know that you could teach via an online course?  What online service could you set up (or resell)?  What are you passionate about?  Could you make a membership-based website on that subject?  (Have you been dreaming about it for years and not done anything about it?? You know who you are!)

Feel free to send me an email and bounce ideas off me. I’ll share with you what I’m doing. I’ve already started: 148 customers to go!

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: E-Commerce, make money online, passive income
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