SydneyFriends StartUp
SydneyFriends new community site!
Sunday, November 16th, 2008 | Meeting people, Sydney Events, SydneyFriends StartUp | No Comments
Recently I have made a new Community site for SydneyFriends, using the ’Spruz’ Sydneyfriends Community. It’s a 100% free service, why not be one of the first to sign up :). I hope it may help others find happiness in their lives.
I welcome any comments to the quality of the new community site, and hope all users can make the most of it.
If you would like to contribute in SydneyFriends forum about the community page visit the forum page today:
SydneyFriends Forum
Besides working on that page, I’ve also been working on a Japan shopping service, as I am still in Osaka, so if anyone wants some Japanese goods check out: MechaJapan.
I think I will have to make a new site, focussing on Japan, instead of writing about it here 
so I’ll try to keep the focus on Sydney here. If anyone would like to contribute to this blog with articles relating to Sydney, please: Mail me.
Besides attending interviews and making websites, I’ve also been teaching English at a school and privately, which I usually enjoy doing. However I prefer working on web sites, so my time spent (working) online is usually more than the time I teach English.
I often think of the SydneyFriends and SJLG (Sydney Japanese Language Group) community in Sydney and hope everyone is enjoying late Spring weather! I am still organising the monthly SydneyFriends Party for Friday the 21st of November, which will be at Shark Hotel again.
All the best,
Lindsay
Here are a few other projects of mine:
http://www.sydney-friends.com
http://www.japanshoppingservice.com
http://www.wherecaniadvertise.com
http://www.ideason2012.com
Recommended Affiliate Networks
Sunday, September 21st, 2008 | SydneyFriends StartUp | No Comments
After looking at different kinds of products to advertise on my site. I came up with a list of the best Affiliate Network sites that I have found so far, I made a site: http://www.affiliatenetworkman.com to share the list and have also put on the page the top 10 Affiliate Network sites in Australia - the sites are either Affiliate Networks or sites that help you find advertising campaigns. SydneyFriends is considering making it’s own affiliate campaign, however in the meantime, we are advertising some products from Affiliate Networks, as can be seen on the shopping page.
For those that do not know, affiliate programs allow you to advertise relevant ads for a company on your site, and if someone clicks on/purchases something from that site you can get a payment/commission. Affiliate Networks, are sites which host many affiliate campaigns for various companies.
The benefits of joining an Affiliate Network is that they manage all the payments for you, so you can host 10+ ads for different companies from the one site, using the one log in, and receiving one lump payment, which is very convenient, and it makes it easier to reach the amount necessary to receive a commission payment.
Check out www.affiliatenetworkman.com for the list.
You can use affiliate networks, to help make money on blogs. For more info on making money on blogs, check out this blog.
Lindsay
Starting An Online Shop - SydneyFriends - part 6
Saturday, September 13th, 2008 | SydneyFriends StartUp | No Comments
Sydney-friends.com has been online for a few months now, with the official opening party on last night. The next stage of the site, is to amp up the shop.
At the moment, Sydneyfriends has an Oscommerce shop, with no products on it yet, and has links to affiliate shops around the border of the page, as well as a guide to shops in Sydney. (I may consider using Zen-cart as well if Oscommerce doesn’t work well, or another product on the Fantastico list).
Some issues I have to deal with are:
Should I provide (free non-affiliate/non ad) links, linking to other sites (such as Woolworths) on my page… This seems to conflict with the idea of having Goodle ads on my page, as one strategy for getting a higher rate of clicks on ads is to have less places for people to go away from your site.
- possible solution, as many sites have, just link to a page describing that shop (within my site), rather than linking directly to their site.
Where can I source my products from? i.e. should I use sites foreign wholesale sites such as International Sourcing from Alibaba.com or Tradekey or can I source them by doing deals via email or whilst travelling.
How can I get leads from other sites to link to my site?
- One solution is to use current auction or reverse auction sites, with links to my site, and at the same time, sell some products on those auction sites. Some excellent Australian Auction sites include:
- OZtion - a cheaper alternative to e-bay
- Ebay.com.au
or there are the very interesting reverse / lowest bid auctions, such as
So there are two important questions, half answered, if anyone knows of other sources of products, or ways to generate leads to shops, I would appreciate a comment or two.
Other ideas for products include, buying them from a local discount store and raising the price, making the products myself, having a second-hand shop and buying things from second-hand sales. I could even register as a business and approach wholesale companies in Australia. However from my point of view, it’s best for me to start - low cost, low risk and once a solid reputation has been built up, try the more expensive sourcing options such as products from well-known companies eg. Sony.
The most important thing at this stage in developing an online shop is to start somewhere, as with all things a small start is better than no start, as a ripple can turn into a wave.
Join OZtion for free. Over 450,000 items for sale!
The Making of SydneyFriends - part 5, Getting your site listed.
Saturday, September 6th, 2008 | SydneyFriends StartUp | No Comments
Here I will mainly talk about two things:
How to get your site listed properly, and other marketing techniques.
Now that I have got some reasonably useful information on my site: Sydney-Friends.com, I am ready to get it seen by more people.
Firstly I need to fix up my site, as recommended at sites such as The Web Marketing Checklist I would be better off to optimise my site titles so they are more “catchy”, and to make sure all my pages have a proper meta description and meta keywords. Most of my keywords were already in H1 -> H3 tags, however this could also need improving.
Getting the site listed on Search Engines
As I have from almost the word go, been using Google Analytics and Google Adsense, I was already listed in Google, however even though I have been online for 3 months now, I was not listed at Yahoo, Search.com or MSN.com (live.com), so instead of waiting for one of the crawlers from the search engines to eventually list my site I did some pro-active listing.
Search engines are a great way to bring traffic to your site, some sites have over 90% of their traffic brought to them via search engines, with the main three being: Google, Yahoo, and MSN (www.live.com or www.msn.com).
To list in the above search engines, it’s best to first get a sitemap. For best results it’s best to get both a siteemap.xml document and a sitemap.html document. The xml document basically contains links to all the pages of your website, and shows how often that page is updated. A sitemap.html page is a basic presentation often in a tree format of the main pages of your website.
You can get a sitemap.xml document made up quickly and at no cost at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com, once that is made it’s simply a matter of registering your site/sitemap at:
and
Other Marketing Methods
Now that the site is listed properly, how can I attract more traffic? and how can I get a higher Google Ranking? One way to get a higher Google Ranking is to have other sites link to your site. Actually I believe this is the best way to get a better Google Ranking, as long as the sites you have linking to you are of good quality.
This page on Linking Strategies has 50 great ways help you get more links. My favourite article (so far) on linking is “101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website“.
Please let me know in the comments if you have suggestions on marketing a website.
-Lindsay
www.sydney-friends.com
The Making of SydneyFriends Part 4
Monday, September 1st, 2008 | SydneyFriends StartUp | 2 Comments
Here I would like to write about and ask questions about what it takes to make an effective/popular website.
Firstly, I’d like to say that my website, sydney-friends.com, is a new site (at the time of writing - 1st Sept 08) as I started making it in June 08, and didn’t get a forum on it until July, so I am still in the experimentation stage as to what works and what doesn’t. So some may say - instead of experimenting with a new site, why don’t you read up about other success stories on the web and emulate them. This is where originality comes in to play, original ideas work, copies of original ideas do not, for example the milliondollarhomepage, was a great idea however copies of that idea, have been much less successful. You might say, why don’t you read a book like “The New Rules of Marketing“, by David Meerman Scott, so I can get great ideas on how to market my site.. Well I am :), however, marketing itself may not be the answer, depending on the content of my site . I mean it’s not much point having 100 youtube videos, great word of mouth advertising, parties, viral marketing, brochures, ads etc, leading to a site that isn’t attractive, has little useful information, doesn’t sell anything and has ads noone will click on.
Websites that are appealing, seem to have either good social connectivity/interaction, provide some kind of communication service, has great products for sale, offers a free service/information, is informative or helps people in some way or other.
So far, SydneyFriends, has 17 pages, plus a forum - (SMF forum), the pages are mostly trying to be informative (see about page), with a little interaction using a few google widgets, however, I have found Google widgets are not really effective.. as if someone uses the widgets, they may click on an ad on the widget, which generates income not for my site, but for the owner of the widget, so there are limited benefits of using widgets - they may attract guests but they also take the guests revenue. I have tried applying for the preview release of “Google Friend Connect“, however they haven’t got back to me.. after 3 attempts.. there is also “Facebook Connect” and “Myspace Data Availability“, whish require more programming than Google’s application.
Interaction.. Can someone leave a comment if you have ideas on interaction. I’ll put some ideas relating to my site - Sydney info/events/learning a language/cultural exchange, here:
- Have offline meetings - monthly parties
- Planners meeting - would be good if I had other interested parties
- Weekly events - barbeques, karaoke, looking at galleries/museums.
- Once a week (or as often as possible) free skype group English lessons.
- Make a stamp… SydneyFriends approval stamp (hehe) for culturally positive sites.
- Have a button on the front page - Ask your English questions here - for English learners. (answers to be published on the forum)
- Have an upcoming event section on the front page… (would need to be updated regularly)
- Have a list of sites that are friends of SydneyFriends….(not really interactive.. but at least may encourage some sites to interact with SydneyFriends.
- Have a form where people could input their name and the output could be a Chinese/Japanese character for that name… (would need a bit of programming I guess… unless I could suck the info from an online dictionary or similar site).
- Have a page where people could write how to say certain phrases in their language.. (probably sent via cgi mail to prevent spam)
- Have a cultural page… where people could send me information regarding their culture, to put on the page … a seemingly slow process… as first people would need to find my site, then be somehow interested enough to send me information regarding their culture… maybe some kind of reward could be given for the best answers… free writing check/SydneyFriends stamp of approval (^-^)… financial rewards?
Ok…. that was a reasonably good brainstorming session… now, another thing… I was considering going to Japan this year.. a month after the opening party possibly for the long term. The more I think of it.. the less keen I am… as I have lived there for almost 3 years.. and thought it was great, however am also starting to get more involved in life in Sydney… changing places may not be my best solution this time.. then there are girlfriend concerns.. and hey.. I’m getting off track.
What is needed and steps to take
Ok, so having an informative site is good.. having really unique, original and a very informative site is much much better… so I need to work on that/ask others to help me work on that, so far it has been a solo job, but that could change.
Next.. make more interaction, on and off the site, as seen in the brainstormed list above.
People also want to have the right range/selection/options to suit their individual needs, so I am also considering to make the site more customisable (Make a members section… to be able to change the look and feel of the page, and what they see on the front page.. I guess a bit like igoogle).. however I rarely use igoogle, so maybe people like myself, mainly just use a site for what service it provides.. eg. email, logos, free stuff…. so..
Lastly, I want to put more free stuff, on my site.. which may be right next to the better not so free stuff..
such as…… logos, English checking, postcard pictures (that I’ve taken), code?, letters of some description… etc.
So this is where I’m up to….
Advertising and marketing is an ongoing process.
Yesterday was the first day I really put out some advertisements, just 2.. one at gumtree.com, the other at jams.tv .Feel free to comment on this blog or write to me in the email/forum section at SydneyFriends.
-Lindsay
What I used to make Sydney-Friends.com
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 | SydneyFriends StartUp | No Comments
Here are some tips I’d like to share after building this website.
At first I didn’t spend too much time with the layout. I tried to focus on content, however at the time of writing both areas still need work. I made a simple table layout for the front page, and used the same format for all pages.
One of the very first things I did, was that since the sight was going to be about Sydney, and helping people in Sydney, I should get some nice photoes of Sydney, so I made a folder of images of Sydney, which came in useful for decorating the front page.
I really like marble, so I chose different coloured marble for the borders for the other pages in the website, I plan to use the thick borders to put menus in later on. At the moment I have used a few borders, such as on the shopping page to include affiliate links to shops. So I may be able to earn some commission if anyone buys from those shops.
The background for the main page was left mainly white for readability, which I may change on the other pages later on. At the moment the other pages have a golden yellow background colour.
I decided to add a few features, such as a forum.. at first I had my site hosted on a server on the cheapest plan, so I couldn’t get access to a database, so I tried using a forum that didn’t require a database, which I obtained from a site such as freescripts.com however that forum often froze as it was too slow, so I had to upgrade my host, before installing SMF forums! which is an excellent forum, and free to use too.
When using smf forums, if you are using version 1.15 or above, there should be a header.php file in the root directory of the forum. If you don’t want to go about trying to integrate your site with smf using layers you can simply add a link back to your site by putting a simple html link in the header.php file at the position you like - I modified the file by using my ftp client (cuteftp) to download and edit the file. (If there isn’t a header.php file in the root directory you can download a module for headers and footers for your smf forum).
I found this youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TrsRxFtgSA&feature=related
helpful when it came to using php to make my site simpler to modify.
I decided to first simplify it by using a generic header on all pages except the front page, as I thought it should be a bit different. (with the party button).
It was much easier to modify the headers for all the pages by just having to modify one file then to go through all the pages! (make a header.inc file, then use the include command in php) write to me for further information).
At first I used a header using tables, then I used a “suckerfish menu”.
* A good site for menu design is www.dynamicdrive.com - very useful.
* A cool site for buttons is: www.cooltext.com
So now that I had a basic skeleton I thought about making the skeleton a bit larger still, so I added a oscommerce shop, which is still not being used at the current time, a guestbook, this blog, (at first I used e2evolution but changed to wordpress as it was easier to use) and linked in a few pages on language acquisition that my flatmate and I had already made.
So as the site got a bit larger, I decided to put advertising on it, so I registered for Google Adsense, and for some affiliate programs, such as those on commissionmonster.com.
After adding all of the above the main thing that was lacking was content, so I decided to make this blog, and tried adding some more pages of value on the site, and that is what I’m currently working on.
If anyone decides that they want to make a site, but doesn’t know how, I would recommend using Fantastico, which is used on many modern Internet Hosts, as it really made the process of adding applications easier, and simple products such as CuteFTP are great as they have inbuilt html editors, which make the process of updating pages quite efficient.
New Pages
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 | SydneyFriends StartUp | No Comments
SydneyFriends is making it’s first steps.
The opening party is set to be on the 12th of September - Friday! probably at Shark Hotel at this point.
I have made a few more pages for the site recently:
• Sydney Beaches
• Meet people online
And have put a few new links to shops on the shopping page, so I can earn a bit of affiliate revenue should anyone buy from those shops
I hope to make some sights that are more useful (not just a page of links) so I plan to make some podcasts in the future to help people learn English/Japanese. As I have taught English for many years, so I think it’s about time I help people online too. I’ll put links to those on my language page in the near future.
Until next time keep smiling.
Lets build SydneyFriends together
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 | SydneyFriends StartUp | No Comments
If you are new to Sydney or have lived here for some time and would like to experience more in Sydney, then lets take a look at sydney-friends.com The new site, which started in early June 2008, and has yet to have it’s opening party (September), is there to help people get connected.
Sydney-Friends has a number of goals. Three of the main goals which are connected, are namely:
1. To make life in Sydney more exciting.
2. To allow people to get to know people more easily.
3. For those new to Sydney or planning to move here, ease in the transition of finding accommodation and facilities.
Most links on the site are directly or indirectly aimed at achieving those goals.
If you are interested in helping out in the organising of any events, such as a party/barbecue, etc. I welcome your help, just write to SydneyFriends, from the mail link on the homepage.
Also in the interest of making the site more multilingual, if you are interested in translating this site into another language, or making a site in your language relating to SydneyFriends, we can host your page on our server.
Hope you enjoyed my first blog for the site.
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