This site has moved

We have moved the Extreme Business blog to a new home within the Ideate website, at: http://www.ideate.co.za

Online Advertising

Today we made a sale to someone who found us via Ananzi's directory of online stores. I was quite surprised, because we submitted the Bug Zapper site to Ananzi almost as an after-thought (listing in Ananzi is free, but you are not guaranteed of results). We were placing a lot more emphasis on our Google Adwords campaign, which so far has cost us around R150, and produced no sales! It just goes to show that it can be worth marketing in the "free" online avenues, if you have a bit of time and patience.

Naming a company

Coming up with a company name can be a fun or very frustrating part of setting up a new business. Due to the nature of Extreme Business we had one shot at coming up with a good name, and fortunately "Bug Zapper" was approved by everyone, and the co.za domain was available - a huge relief!

Marketing expert Seth Godin has written some good thoughts from when they named their latest company, "Squidoo". Read about it here.

End of the Challenge

The 3 days have come to end, and we have packed up and headed home to our families and beds. It has been far more draining then any of us imagined.

We achieved our goal of creating something from nothing. We have a brand, a product, a supply chain, an e-commerce website, and the start of an online marketing effort. As of 7:42pm on day three we have made a few sales to people who knew about us and this project, but we have not achieved our goal of a sale to a complete stranger who found us through online advertising. We will write more about why we think we failed in that aspect, but the short version is that leaving your marketing effort to the last day (particularly if that's a Saturday) is not a good idea. Technically there are still 4 hours left of today, so it might still happen!

We are definitely going to continue with this blog, giving more details on what we learned about e-commerce, logistics, online marketing etc, so stay tuned if those topics interest you.

E-commerce Update

My main job was to get the credit card facility up and running. We have done this before for other clients, but we didn't know if it was possible to do it in two working days (Thursday and Friday)!

The company we chose was Virtual Card Services (www.vcs.co.za). They act as an intimediary between the credit card companies and ourselves. The e-commerce process is:
1) The client visits our website and adds something to their shopping cart. They fill in their personal details, and then click on a link which says "Proceed to secure payment page".
2) They are taken to a secure page on VCS where they fill in their credit card details.
3) They are sent back to our website where we tell them that their package is on the way.

VCS then hold on to the money for 14 days before transferring it to our account. This is a security precaution in case we are ripping people off, and it gives VCS a chance to return the money to the customer. It does mean that VCS can get us up and running within a few hours, because there is no real risk from their side.

VCS charges a 6% fee per transaction, with a minimum of R150 a month. E-commerce options in South Africa are limited, but so far we have been happy dealing with this Johannesburg based company.

Idea Farm Visitor

Simon from Idea Farm (www.ideafarm.co.za) has just stopped by. It was good to meet him and hear some of his ideas. Hearing him talk I was reminded that our little team certainly doesn't know everything! Perhaps that's why an idea like this one (http://www.thebusinessexperiment.com/) might have some merit.

Praise and Criticism

We have received a lot of positive feedback, but also negative. Responding to the criticisms might give a better idea of what we're doing, so here is something I wrote on the TomorrowToday website (http://www.tmtd.biz/2005/10/05/extreme-business/#comments)

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We first had the idea for this project 2 weeks ago and we didn't want to lose momemtum, so it has all been put together very quickly. I'm sure we have made plenty of mistakes, but here are some responses to the ones that you highlighted.

1) The four of us are friends who run our own small businesses, and work on projects together. We decided to do this project together mainly for fun and to extend ourselves. We didn't aim to create a multi-cultural, multi-gender "team". This thing just happened.

2) Because we all run small businesses, we tried to miss as little work time as possible, which is why we ended on a Saturday. We initially thought of doing it on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but that would have made for a very tiring weekend! It also adds a bit of reality - most new businesses start during evenings and weekends.

3) I'm surprised that Anj is able to criticise our sales experience from the little he/she knows of us. I suppose it's up to us to prove ourselves!

The exposure that we have received has totally taken us by surprise. We didn't expect it, and I don't think we would have gone to all this effort in the hope of some publicity.

Nearly there!

We've just scoffed some pizza (thanks Butler's!) and now we are going flat-out to have the site live before we leave this evening. Apologies to everyone who is waiting eagerly.

Podcast 3

Our third audio post. Click on the title to download a 1.2mb MP3 file.

Lunch on Day One

Our apologies for the long silence. It has been quite an interesting morning trying to balance making a business and making a TV program. For most of us it is the first time we have been involved in anything that has been filmed, and there is a lot to get used to! Everything takes so long - setting up lights and sounds, getting different angles, doing retakes. Our intention was to just do the business thing, and let the camera record it, but it's not as simple as that! We have only just chosen the product, after a few hours of working.

Extreme Podcast 1

This is our first Podcast. It is a 1.7mb MP3 file, recorded at the start of the first morning. Click on the title of this post to download it.

Waiting to start...

It's 9:35 on the big day. We're waiting for the camerman to arrive, and for Fred to get here after his daughter's first birthday breakfast. The nerves are starting to build, and I think the time pressure will get to us. The clock is ticking!

Fortunately we could get our iBurst internet connection working on the set, but it's a little unstable. It's quite a key element when you're trying to start a new online business!

The webcam is up and running, so hit refresh to see the latest picture.

Start of the Big Week

I'm back from leave, and so much seems to have happened in the week that I was away! All on its own this little idea seems to have snowballed into something very exciting. I'm actually starting to get a bit nervous - what product are we going to choose? Will we make a sale in the 3 days? What does "sustainable business" mean? I suppose a week from now we'll know the answers!