AdesBlog.com

LogoMyWay - Another Great Business Model

Posted in » Links - by Ades

20 Comments 

LogoMyWay - is another great business model that just works. It’s a marketplace where logo designers and businesses meet. Looking at the site, I was amazed by the number of submissions and the quality of works that were submitted for each logo design contest. (Each contest gets easily 100-200 entries) And they are really good, see the winner logos.

Basically this is how it works. If you are looking to get your logo designed, you come to LogoMyWay and create a contest. Your prize can be anywhere between $200 to $1000. And the most important feature is - and I think this is why LogoMyWay is successful - all the funds are prepaid and the designers are guaranteed to be paid. That’s right, the winning designer is guaranteed to get paid for his/her work. I believe this is why there are many quality works and tons of submissions for each contest.

It’s in the Business Model

For example 99Designs does the same thing with the same concept, but they do not guarantee a payment to the designers, prepayment is just an option at 99Designs that contest organizers can choose to do. Instead 99Designs concentrates on “100% Money Back Guarantee” business model. For this reason you can see that the submissions for each contest at 99Designs are much lower than that of LogoMyWay.

Important Lesson

Being a logo design marketplace, LogoMyWay could have a better logo. Their current logo looks not so professional, and the website could be greatly improved, especially to make it more web2.0 like.

But that’s the lesson we should all learn when launching an internet business. And that is, you shouldn’t be perfectionist when launching a project. Don’t hinder the project from being launched just because the logo looks certain way, or the website design is not what you expected. Rather launch the project and test the waters. If you see that the response is good and people really like what you are offering, then and only then do whatever necessary to improve your project i.e revamp the whole website, get a new logo etc.

There is a time when you need to be perfectionist, and it is not during launching new internet projects. For web projects, as long as it is bug-free and all the features are in place and properly working - you are ready to go!

Website: www.logomyway.com

ConceptFeedback - Get Second Opinion on Your Design for Free

Posted in » Links, Usability - by Ades

22 Comments 

ConceptFeedback is a great site where you can get free reviews from Web Designers on your newly launched blog/website’s design, usability, logo design etc.

To get started i.e to be able to post your website (concept) for reviews, you need to review at least 5 other websites first. And that’s the main engine that keeps the site running. Otherwise, people would just post their own website and not review others’.

It’s a great idea - getting opinions of web designers for free. Very useful tool I would say for new bloggers who are new to effective webdesign and usability.

Website: www.conceptfeedback.com

HTML5 Cheat Sheet

Posted in » Links - by Ades

20 Comments 

I know most of you do not really work with HTML these days, but here is a nice printable HTML5 Cheat Sheet from Woork.

Author: http://woork.blogspot.com

Sketchory - 250,000 free drawings

Posted in » Links - by Ades

10 Comments 

Sketchory provides 250,000 free drawings which can be freely shared, in unlimited number, with the additional freedom that you can use up to 5,000 sketches even commercially. Founders of this project are Dominik Schmid, Philipp Lenssen and Nikolai Kordulla.

Drawings were collected from another project of theirs called SketchSwap where people can draw things and submit, in exchange they will get one random sketch from someone else.

Website: sketchory.com

WebLoadTester.com - Web Stress Testing

Posted in » Links, Online Tools - by Ades

8 Comments 

Launching a new project that will be the next facebook or twitter? Then make sure you stress-test your website and servers. The following I received from mon.itor.us in my email, I thought the offer was pretty good.

WebLoadTester allows instantly check your website load handling capabilities. You can enter many URLs, number of nodes, duration and number of simultaneous users to generate web stress test. There is a special promotional price $1.98 per each order regardless of number of URLs, nodes and clients. The offer is valid till 2/15/09.

Website: http://www.webloadtester.com

Font Squirrel - high quality free fonts

Posted in » Links - by Ades

4 Comments 

If you are looking for high quality free fonts, check out www.fontsquirrel.com It has one of the best collection of fonts (commercial use of fonts is allowed).

Productive Magazine: Free Monthly PDF Magazine

Posted in » Links, e-books - by Ades

12 Comments 

New free PDF magazine on productivity and GTD (getting things done) has just launched. You can download the first edition here. First edition includes interview with GTD guru David Allen.

It’s quite an interesting project I would say, first of all it’s going to be free. Secondly, it’s going to be PDF magazine. And thirdly, it will focus on productivity only. Let’s see how it will progress over time. I wish them Good Luck!

In their own words…

Productive Magazine (PM) is (going to be):

• a regular magazine (monthly or bi-monthly - yet to be determined)
• featuring the best articles (blog posts) from best productivity bloggers
• Downloadable in a nicely-formatted PDF format
• for FREE

URL: www.productivemagazine.com

16 Essential PC Applications for Bloggers

Posted in » Links - by Ades

14 Comments 

Thanks to Ruchir Chawdhry of www.techvivo.com for including my color picker tool (AdesClrPicker) in his guest post at ProBlogger: 16 Essential PC Applications for Bloggers. I appreciate it.

LiqPay - alternative payment system to paypal

Posted in » Links, Make Money - by Ades

30 Comments 

Recently I had some freelance work done by someone overseas. When I wanted to send him the payment, he didn’t have a paypal account, nor moneybookers account. And he didn’t want to be paid through Western Union since the service charge was too high. So, he suggested that I use a new service called LiqPay. So, use I did! And it went pretty well…

Let me briefly explain how this system works and what were the steps that I went through for sending the money.

About LiqPay (i.e liquid payment, as in electronic payment)

First of all, the LiqPay’s difference from other payment systems is - it’s main mode of authentication for all the transactions (i.e logging in to your account, sending money etc) is through SMS. That’s right, every time there is a transaction, you need to authorize it. And the authorization code is sent through SMS to your mobile phone.

For example, let’s say I want to send you $200. First, I login to my LiqPay accout, then initiate a transfer of $200 to your account. Once the transfer is initiated, the system will send me SMS which will contain the authorization code for this transaction. So, if I am sure and want to confirm the payment, I just enter back this code to the system and authorize the payment. That’s it, now your account should be credited by $200. That’s the whole process for any transaction - authorization code always comes to your mobile phone. This makes it impossible for someone else to use your account. (unless of course he has your SIM card ;)

Registration

Registration is free and doesn’t need any authorization. Registration is done onsite but using your mobile phone. Authorization code will be sent to your mobile phone when registering. Your username will be your mobile phone number.

When you load your account for the first time with your VISA or MasterCard, support team will call you to authenticate the card. They will ask few questions regarding card details, your particulars and the billing address. This is a one time thing and won’t be asked for the subsequent transactions.

Fees/Charges

What makes it attractive is perhaps the low fees that they charge:

• For loading your account from your Credit or Debit Card - Free
• For sending and receiving money - Free
• For withdrawing to your VISA (Credit or Debit Card) - 1.95$ + 1% of the amount transferred.

Conclusion

Basically, everything from registration to sending the money to the freelancer was done within a day. Unlike MoneyBookers which took me more than two weeks to get my account fully functional. LiqPay takes a day because they need to call the card-issuer bank to authenticate the information that you have provided to them. After the first time, subsequent transactions will be processed immediately.

I think I will be using the system some more, especially when people ask me to send money to them through Western Union, or when the amount sent is too large for paypal. Paypal takes around 4% from the transferred amount, + $5 for withdrawal fees. Four percent can be quite big amount when you send large amounts of money.

For LiqPay the only requirement for the payment receiver is that, he/she should have a VISA or MasterCard card, because withdrawals are done to the card.

URL: www.liqpay.com

P.S For Malaysians, I used my al-Rajhi Debit Card for LiqPay and it was accepted.

FixYa.com - Community Generated Tech Support

Posted in » Advice to Businesses, Links - by Ades

10 Comments 

FixYa.com - this is what you call a Tech Support 2.0, it’s Web2.0 (less registration forms, no need to login to post a ticket… etc), it’s Social (people post problems and others provide solutions), and best of all it’s FREE (unlike sites like www.experts-exchange.com).

I had a problem with my Maxtor OneTouch4 external drive and was able to find a solution at this site. Found my way to the solution page from Google actually.

Advice to IT Companies

If companies are smart, they should dedicate some of their tech support staff on such sites. Because most multinational companies have a support system that is dysfunctional - it’s like they need “support” themselves to improve their overly complicated support system ;) Why can’t it be like the above site? Easy, usable, fast!

URL: http://www.fixya.com/