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View Full Version : It made me larf today!



geti-titanium
11-11-2009, 08:38 PM
A customer came in to pick up an engraving job today and we ended up talking about his website. I asked him if it brought in much business to which he replied, "not really". He then told me about a large jewellery manufacturer that has a plugin which allows their customers to integrate it into their website and use their database for selling their products.

That sounds good I thought, then he told me it wasn't financially beneficial to have it because they charge a monthly fee of around £45.

I was amazed that a company of that size could get it so wrong. Before the internet, the idea of giving things away in business on any great scale was practically unheard of, now it's the norm, freebies wherever you look.

To charge your own customers for helping them to sell your products is a major shot in the foot as far as I'm concerned. The software wouldn't have cost them that much to produce and maintain so by distributing it for free to all who wanted to use it could only benefit them more by stimulating sales. The majority of those same customers are probably not making enough sales through their websites to justify it anyway so it seems doubly bad to charge them for it.

And another thing - one of the large jewellery magazines has an internet directory and they rang to check the details of my free entry. Do you know that by enhancing my listing I can get it to the top of the search in my category along with a description of the company, a logo and a link to my website all for a measly £15.20/week (£795/year) - bargain!

We searched for Titanium rings - 5 results - if I paid I could catapult it right to the top and bask in the increase in business it was going to bring me. I felt really special at that point - but not £795 worth of specialness! I once paid £500 for a year for a banner on Lycos which had one hit - and that was me checking to see if it worked :snow:

ps_bond
12-11-2009, 09:01 AM
That does sound worthy of P T Barnum.

I suppose it would have to depend upon the breakeven point on sales vs. the software, but this isn't a general-purpose tool we're talking about here, is it? It has only one function - to assist sales of that manufacturer's product.