Blogging Along

Always good to get clients websites live even on a Sunday evening.

A shopping e commerce site selling photo prints, art and frames was the request of a local “Doug” from the company Bay Tree Image.

What I came up with is Baytree-image.co.uk Using WordPress and the “ShopperPress” theme made the job a lot easier for myself and Doug to understand how to manage it.

As a keen photographer but not so keen techie guy proved a little bit of a battle to get round issues and for Doug to follow how things work. I previously setup and started the site in Magento which would have been a big mistake due to the intricate options and CMS structure.

I have a few sites myself that I will be using ShopperPress on including PlayParachutes.co.uk which will make any future sales of the site a little easier for maintaining and demos.

New Year and New goals will be in the form of a marketing service that weirdly enough rolls all the things I have been doing for the past 2 years into one! SEO, Domains, mini sites, Video, Photos, Content writing etc They goals will be having a ques of businesses wanting to get involved.

First stop will be to create 3-5 example showcases of how it looks and works as everyone likes to see examples of anything they are buying into. FACT!

On the domain front I am letting a lot of them drop if I think they are way too much effort to even start to gain any revenue or are not gems. I would say 5% are niche domains / Websites like PlayParachutes.co.uk (not dev yet) that will become cash cows for advertising rev or actual e commerce sites selling products on stock. The other 95% are the GEO domains like my HullBeds.co.uk which will be slowly moved over from the BIG ‘G’ to REAL – LOCAL companies where they will be featuring on other sites I have.

3 Words I hated since I started out in business in early 2008 is VAT, TAX and Books. If I could give anyone any advice in starting up a business, it’s “Get an accountant ASAP”. You may think £100-£200 a month to do ALL your accounts is steep but boy is it worth it in the end. It frees you up to do other work YOU get paid for and is one less stressful thing in your life.

Be careful (as I have found out) you do get shocking accountants that just don’t talk to you and you get some FAB ones.

Other Goals and plans that I do hope will help Humber TV are ones with local groups or business. I can offer News and video coverage to help promote their services and they can offer me the use of the facilities there. Maybe the use of  a Board room, meeting rooms, Gym, etc it’s a little bit of back scratching that costs both parties no cash.