Shopping Mall

[Alastair]

I just wondered if you guys have any opinions for me on a possible deal I'm being offered on Electric Scotland.

The deal proposed is to promote a Shopping Mall on our sites that sell Scottish goods all made in Scotland. Their idea is that they'd compensate me by ensuring that they would meet my current income from Google and InfoLinks (the in-text advertising) and give me the opportunity to earn more. In return I would remove all Google adverts and InfoLinks from my site using the current Google placements to promote their company.

While on the face of it this is a good deal I need to get an idea if this deal would be fair to the propective advertiser. I can't ever remember shopping malls or selling goods on my site being a winner. I guess of course part of this would depend on what they were selling but at the moment it's a mixture of apparel and gifts.

I think the idea is that over time the shopping mall will be an obvious part of the site that when folk look to purchase such goods they'd try Electric Scotland first. The placement of their adverts would be rather obvious on the site that it really couldn't me missed.

Doing this deal would remove the double green underline text and it might reduce the size of our header making the content more easily seen.

I seem to remember that the problem on selling Scottish goods was always the price of shipping which made some products more expensive even if they were a bit cheaper as shipping costs put the overall price higher. There again you are getting goods made in Scotland.

So... any thoughts on this? Also if we did this deal what products might you be interested in purchasing if the price was right?

This is one of these times when I could do with your thoughts on this as I'm a touch uncertain as to adding a comprehensive Shopping Mall is the right way forward for the site.

Alastair

[1938 Observer]

Re: Shopping Mall

Alastair,
This is one of those "Curly Questions", sort of "the Devil" you know" situation.
I'm not a great sounding board on this type of thing as I prefer to 'personal shop' (when there is cash:smile:). I'm still not trusting on online purchasing (old fashioned I guess).
Then there is the situation of placing all ones eggs in the same basket,beneficial in the initial stages, but there is the scenario that has been enacted with various companies/primary producers in the past where they have moved from multiple clients and then found themselves 'locked in' to a sole purchaser who then controls the pricing/market allocation.:unsure:
Gordon :smile:

[Alastair]

Re: Shopping Mall

Thanks for the thoughts Gordon. I have actually known the folk for quite a while in fact they put me up for a week prior to me leaving Scotland for the USA. I figure I can always go back to Google and InfoLinks and will likely leave some pages with them to keep some income going with them.

Alastair

[1938 Observer]

Re: Shopping Mall

Sounds like a fair compromise, all things are worth a fair trial.

[Alastair]

Re: Shopping Mall

I guess we're like magazines in that we need advertising to generate income but we also need seriously good content for people to buy the magazines or visit our web sites. At the end of the day the web has always been free although it probably shouldn't be.

I'm interested to see how the Rupert Murdoch model plays out. Everyone has said he's lost a ton of visitors but I suspect the ones that have paid for a subscription are actually making him more money that the adverts were providing him. So he could end up earning more money despite having a greatly reduced visitor count. But we'll see how it plays out.

Given my own unique visitor count on a 4 week average if every unique visitor paid me $1.00 a year to access the site I'd quadruple my earnings. And most of that would go right back into the site and enable me to do a lot more with the site. I'd also not require any advertising at all.

Like the BBC did a survey and found that most people only visit up to 6 web sites on a regular basis. Yes they may well visit others when searching for something but these are often just one off visits and they won't go back or rarely go back. So if each of these 6 web sites charged $5 a year for access that is hardly a large amount to spend. And these web sites would likely earn a lot more money and thus make their sites even better.

So by insisting the web be free we've ended up with a model that is probably holding us all back.

Also way back when I started to build Electric Scotland I opted for a content model. That meant that as I built a considerable amount of content there would always be people visiting that were new to the site and thus find more than they could ever read. That meant that when I came to retire I could still just leave the site up and I'd probably continue to get a good revenue stream even if no more content went up.

In some ways it's a bit like this community. I work very hard to try and make it a decent one. I've given myself 5 years to make it work. At some point I hope it will really start to take off and by that time not many will bother if I post anything or not as they'll have made their own circle of friends. That means it will have a life of its own no matter what I do or don't do.

Alastair