Damien Mulley

Got an email ages back now about mybeautifulboutique.com, an Irish site dedicated to listings and promotions of Boutiques. It’s a boutique directory which gives users an online boutique emporium to browse through. so boutiques get an online presence and listing. Not bad for what can be very traditional businesses.

And how do they make their money?

They give all boutiques a basic listing for free, and then the option to upgrade to a premium listing €330 per year which provides them with /theirname on the site, stats on visits, they are highlighted in searches on their site and an easy content management system about other things.

They’ll also have a newsletter going out where advertising will be taken. This will probably be where most of their revenue will come from in my view. There’s millions left in email marketing in Ireland if only it were done well. Oh that’s right it is. Use Toddle folks!

I wonder is there a guy in Ireland called Paul that has a boutique?

I’ve been thinking for a while about the way I do business and how at various talks and training gigs I recommend various people. I even have an “I recommend” page on this here blog. I carry some cards of people around but honestly I’d love to carry more cards if I had room and then there’s the issue of topping up on the cards.

So I was thinking of getting cards printed with maybe 7-8 lines with a check box on each line and list those people from my I recommend page. When talking to someone then I’d say “This guy here” as I tick the box next to Richard Hearne, for example. Or tick two or three boxes. Much easier than people writing their details down.

So each line would have:
Person’s Name/Business Name – What they do – Web address

Or something like that. I wonder would an enterprising printing company bring out a template to make this easy for people? It’s a mini social network on a piece of paper. If we can do the Tuesday Push on blogs, we could do another form on cards. However, the recommendations should be genuine and there shouldn’t be horsetrading of the type “I’ll put you on my card if you’ll put me on yours”.

Anyway, I must go printing these.

Photo owned by surprise truck (cc)

Irish Web Awards Categories. Subject to change though they probably won’t. Happy to include some categories that have not been catered for before.

The 2008 Irish Web Awards will take place in the Radisson SAS, Dublin on October 11th

Yeah, sponsorship is being sought. Remember you cannot seek nominations or be nominated if you are a sponsor. Or nominate your clients’ sites. If you want to sponsor then email contact [at] awards.ie Category sponsorship and headliner sponsorship is being sought.

Nominations will open in August.

At a recent meeting/event thingy someone mentioned a client wanted to build buzz about their new product which was aimed at high-end professionals in a specific area of a large city. But didn’t want to explicitly state what the service was going to be. And they wanted it to be “viral”.

I had considered targeting the clubs where these rich boys go to act out their large egos. When they go in to said club handstamp them with the name or logo of this new service. Nice gold stamp or something like that. Or a gold bracelet thingy.

And then Piaras mentions your hand has now become advertising space. It could have been me…