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eTickets.to
September 29, 2006 in 4 out of 5 stars, A service, Event managementeTickets.to: A self-service eTicketing system for events, lets promoters sell their own tickets online without the need for a ticketing agent. Sign-Up Technologies Event promoters get the money and the customer data directly (so you own your own data). - no extortionate booking fees or third party agents getting in the way. No minimum fees, no percentages, just a flat charge per ticket sold. Great for any kind of event -- a workshop, seminar or conference, or (as one of their customers, Exit Festival did) a monster event with thousands of participants. (Or even a school play or LAN party). Here's what an Exit Festival representative had to say: "its clear to see the benefit to our business in terms of additional revenue by eliminating booking fees and being able to control and tailor our customer service; we now have a far more direct and efficient way of communicating with our customers and offering them value for money." Well done, simple interface. You can be selling tickets in just a few minutes. You can set up your own additional fees per ticket (if you wish). You can control number of tickets to be sold, types of tickets to be sold, dates to start/stop selling. You have some moderate control over the feel of the ticket selling page (logo and content). You can sell your tickets in GBP, Euros or Dollars. Full featured without being bogged down by complexity. They're working on a mobile version to deliver tickets by SMS and introducing a wider range of payment gateways (only PayPal is supported at the moment). $19.99 account activation, then $1 per ticket sold. (Although you can set up an account and try out the process without making a payment). Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Happy Quote
September 21, 2006 in Happy Quotes"My new favorite word is 'awkward.'...The reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the
barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the
remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and
it wouldn't be worth the effort."
- Seth Godin
Happy Links
September 20, 2006 in Happy LinksBusiness Model Advice:
- Jason Fried of 37signals on the 3 ways to make money with your software - including his opinion of each. It's no surprise he gives his highest marks to the subscription-supported model.
- Business Model Roundup is a post by the Particle Tree dudes pointing us to 5 possibilities.
- Don't settle for Google AdSense
is a thought-provoking look at the possibility of doing much better
than AdSense with your next brilliant ad-revenue based wunderproject.
Summary: try Shopping.com Ads. (This all depends on your content/audience of course, but interesting stuff.)
Happy Links
September 19, 2006 in Happy LinksGoing solo:
- 17 tips for freelancers marks the 17th anniversary of Megan Jeffery's jump to becoming a freelance artist. There's wisdom in these here tips.
- Going Solo: A Few Words Of Advice from Stowe Boyd offers good tips on marketing, and balance.
- How Odeo Screwed Up. Ok, these are more "anti-tips" for going solo - but just as valuable, if not more. (If anyone has even more details on Evan's talk please let me know).
- Interview with Dan Cederholm of Cork'd.
Cork'd is such an inspiring little startup/side project done right. I quite enjoyed this interview. Dan has been solo for sometime with SimpleBits, but this is his most entrepreneurial (and enviable) venture yet.
Happy Links
September 18, 2006 in Happy Links- A great article from CCE on how Modo & Modo revived their (boring!) Moleskine brand - and boy did they. The key? They embraced customers, particularly passionate online ones and focused on product quality.
- Paul Graham: How to Present to Investors. Actually this is a collection of tips from all 4 Y Combinator partners. 14 great points from folks who ought to know.
- Trizle is becoming one of my new favorite blogs for quality pith. This post on how to pay your contractors offers some tips on squeezing out maximum quality.
- Excel Tip: Instant in-cell graphs. This is just such a cool tip I couldn't resist archiving here for posterity.
Amigo
September 11, 2006 in 4 out of 5 stars, A service, Email newsletter managementAmigo: Amigo is a service that matches advertisers with online newsletters, and vice versa. Carson Systems For every person fully converted to RSS land, there are a bazillion folks still reaching their audience with good old fashion email newsletters. Carson Systems cleverly found this blind spot in the market and have applied many of the modern design, functionality and simplicity principles that have gained traction on the web in the last 18 months. In so doing, they've created an elegant service that can benefit owners of those email lists (large or small), and those of us who may wish to communicate with those audiences. Part of the challenge in the "techcrunch" industry is reaching markets beyond our own echo-chamber. If Amigo can effectively gain newsletter owners beyond our borders - this can be a very effective tool for both sides (newsletter owners and advertisers). It's still very early yet so there's a slight chicken-and-egg problem with reaching a critical mass. But the application is strong enough - with time I do believe it'll happen. I'd be slightly nervous about click fraud and I'm curious to see how they plan to handle it. Amigo takes 30% of click revenue. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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nPost
September 6, 2006 in 3 out of 5 stars, A person, An interviewnPost: Another great resource for entrepreneurs, a collection of interviews with CEOs and Founders of small and startup businesses. Nathan Kaiser Kaiser has collected almost 150 intelligently conducted interviews, including some favorites of mine like Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia (how awesome is he?) and Joe Kraus of Jot Spot.
Clean site, searchable, or list them all. It appears that he records these, might be nice to have the audio versions as well. The search is a bit iffy. Free Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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