EkaBlog - Site Blog for Ekaweeka the Small Business Community

There is much going on here for Ekaweeka on many fronts. We've raised a nice amount of attention from around the world, our family of shops and services have grown with the addition of wood workers, soap makers, screenplay writers and more. We have snagged a couple folks from the UK and Australia which is so exciting.

Can I take a second to digress though? Cause we just got back to Hollywood on the 30th and compared to the chilly air and gray mornings in Nor Cal, I am loving LA!!! It is 70 degrees fahrenheit which feels like 85 in the direct sunlight. Lets see here.. its 52 in Palo Alto (Bay Area), 40 in Chicago, 45 in London, 46 in New York, and 42 in Moscow....hmmm why did I ever grow up with a such a bad idea of LA? The question boggles my mind.

Anyhow back to Eka news, how about this, we fixed the image deletion on the edit item page YAY!!!!!

Alright already there is work to be done!

This just in, Briana of Love Briana stopped by the Ekaweeka offices to say hello. She has had some time off from her day job recently and has been working on Love Briana exclusively.

So she pops in and the first words out of her mouth are "working on Love Briana fills my heart with joy!"

And thats just it folks, doing your own thing makes life better. So in a nutshell this is why we do it... you (the small business) have a dream, all you have to do is make your passion a working business which though not easy is entirely possible. We at Ekaweeka are trying to make an easy solution for getting your business up and running in no time with no web design knowledge. Then we market our wonderful family of shops and services to the world and boom!
You get customers, we get your love, and you get the joy of running your own business and being your own boss.

Also since making this great website is our dream, fullfilling your dreams fulfills ours! Sounds kind of like the birds that keep the bugs off the elephant's back, they get to eat the bugs, he has some great friends who literally cover his back. Symbiotic folks thats the word of the day. :-)

One of the most difficult parts of working towards anything, be it riding a wave, or getting your business up and running, is going through your baby steps. Most people wouldn't jump on a short board and try to ride a double overhead wave out on the North Shore without any experience. But everyone tends to imagine themselves riding that 16 ft wave before they have even gotten their feet wet.

In the early days of planning out Ekaweeka we were so high up in the clouds. We had no idea what was waiting for us and we weren't planning for what was going to come first. "We'll have blogs, and calendars, and maps, and ajax customization!" Hahahah its funny just thinking about how silly some of the crap we conceived was. Truth is, we needed to be thinking about the best way to get started without burying ourselves in a heap of junk.

The problem with the big dreams is, you really have no idea where you are going to be after you go through the baby steps. Chances are you will not be anywhere you thought you would be, so why waste your time planning for a future that is all in your head? Start at the bottom, and guide yourself towards that goal.

For anyone out there just getting started, if you have high hopes, focus on the immediate. If you do not know what the immediate is, go get some books on what you are planning to do, read some blogs, research your craft/line of work. Find out what the first steps are and get started on doing those first steps. You can't ride the double overheads without trying some overheads first, and you can't ride the overheads without riding the four footers, and so on, and so on. Yes it is frustrating to start small, but time flies and if you just make a little progress everyday, you'll be there before you know it.

If you are having trouble figuring out where to start email me: tom (at) ekaweeka.com I'll be happy to help you explore what your baby steps are.

With the recent user surge we've gotten a load of feedback, suggestions for development, and the pressure to add more functionalities. Here are just a few:

Urlencode functions, most people are unaware of this feature; basically whenever you go to a page that requires you are logged in, the page sends you to the login page, but after you login it should redirect you back to where you were originally. An easy feature to put in, we just haven't gotten around to it.

Sent messages, and drafts. We've heard from users that they would like to see the messages they have sent and a folder for messages to send later. The message center should have a sent folder and a draft folder soon.

Image Uploads. Right now the image upload script is... well not perfect, it doesn't handle GIF's or PNG's which hasn't stopped many people, but we want it to be more smooth. Expect this in the next couple weeks.
Another image related issue, right now we just resize the width of your thumb image, this works in most cases, but to get a more even sized array of thumb images, we'll add an additional script that checks if the image height is greater then the set width, if so it will shrink the greater of the two without losing proportion.

Blogging - Thats right, you asked for it, we're gonna bring it. You'll be able to blog on your profile shortly. Right after that we'll add an RSS feed insert - this will be handy to those who already have a blog but want it to show up on Ekaweeka.

Photo Gallery - We know it! The current photo gallery is not much more then a preview and a link to a separate window. Soon it will open the image in a Ekaweeka formatted page with links to navigate to the next, previous image etc.. This plus a few other sweet functions coming in 2-3 weeks.

Event Invites - Get the party started! When it comes to marketing and stirring up business, sometimes there aren't many methods that are very fun. What is more fun then throwing a party to get the interest flowing? Nothing!!! So we'll be building an evite style event planning system for ya'll.

Of course.... the list just goes on and on.. but I thought you guys might like to hear about it from the source.

Have a great weekend.

I posted about the weather around the country and in Hollywood on January 1st earlier this week. So when I checked today's weather and saw it was 70 degrees in New York and 68 in Boston on January 7th, I had to give it up the East Coast. It's 63 in L.A. today — 61 at Manhattan Beach, where we're about to hit the waves.

They say it's a sign of global warming, which I wouldn't deny by any means. But the weather gods in the Northeast do throw a curveball every once in a while. Either way, it's a fair bet that millions of people have dropped their priorities and gone out to the park in a T-shirt. If you've been there you know what I mean. They are having an amazing weekend. I like to chill out in Union Square (in the Village, NYC) on days like that.

Cheers, NYC — lets go surfing :-)

As promised, the urlencode function I spoke of last week has been added to the system.
Now when users get a message from Ekaweeka's notification system and they click on the message board link in their email, as usual they'll be prompted to login. But after logging in unlike before where they would be taken to their account page, now since they originally navigated to their message center before logging in, after logging in they'll be taken to their message center. This applies to any page on the site that requires you to be logged in, give it a test spin - try to go here: www.ekaweeka.com/my_friends.
If we've done our job properly, it will ask you to login, then it will take you to your friends page.

We think small businesses are the way of the future. Why else would we bank so much on a site completely devoted to small businesses? The way we see it, while there have always been small businesses, the number of small businesses has gone through a bell curve style growth over time. In the beginning there were many, overtime their numbers diminished, but now they are coming back in a big way.

Before GM & Coca-Cola, hundreds of years ago people made a living by specializing in a craft or service. These crafts/service specialists could only handle so many clients, so over time business men began to pop up. Business men specialized in organizing one business to serve more customers than any single shop keeper could handle on his/her own. Eventually those enterprising businesses got so big a single business could employ thousands of people. And so the number of shops/services decreased for a time as more people worked for a large corporation rather then their own small business.

The enterprising business model expanded and evolved into to the corporate world that we live in today. But corporate life isn't for everyone and even those that can handle it don't always have a choice and their company lays them off. Some of these folks say "the heck with it!" and they start their own business.

We're biased of course, but from where we see it, many people are choosing to take their own path, and where possible many small businesses will continue to sprout up as long as the market and the small business people can handle it. Some of those that are very successful may choose to go down the direction of expanding their business to employ many people. But most will reach a point of self-sustainability and it will be enough for them. They'll stick with their own business because it is something they love, and they'll have no one to answer to but the people who love their business. For the small business person having his/her own company will be way better then working for or owning a large company with hundreds of employees.

And so for us, Ekaweeka is very much like a renaissance village. It's a place for all those small business people to get things done on their own, but with the help of many other small business people around them.

After some heavy analysis we've decided to reformat the item page. The original format fit into the family of pages that each users' content is organized with. The item page needed a special format to make it clear the item was the star of the page.

So we placed the item photo at the top of the page in a much larger preview. We still need to make the "buy it now" buttons more conspicuous but this was a great start. We hope to continue make every page serve it's content rather then the other way around.

As the user database grows all the accessory behaviors of businesses looking for business are beginning to appear. Finding business is tricky and except for a small fraction of business owners, most of us have to put a great deal of effort into getting this half of the system going. The sucky part of marketing is so many get it wrong and when they get it wrong - it's sooooo wrong. Think of all the upper-case-super-punctuated posts on Craigslist that somehow beat the system and repost many times per day (bastards! - they ruined CL). Or better yet email spam. Well targeted marketing works but when it isn't well targeted it is not welcome and negative word of mouth is sure to ensue.

I pray we don't have to start working in spam and abuse filters before we get to 1,000 users but unfortunately we must assume it's a possibility for safety purposes. In the meantime - for all those reading this, take a moment to think about what you are doing to get attention and exposure. Doing it wrong can really make life difficult so start working on doing it right! In my own experiences there are two types of marketing I have gotten results from. (1) With Dog Walker NYC and the other (2) with Ekaweeka. Each was different and was a result of failing at other attempts.

I can already tell this is going to become a lengthy discussion so I'll break it up into a series of posts (which is also great cause I'll have something to write about for the next few days). So tomorrow I'll get into figuring out what kind of marketing will help you find your customers best, and eventually we'll get into what is acceptable and what is not. In the meantime take a moment to consider what you offer and who needs it (by need I mean literally cannot live without it). If no one needs your product as is the case for many of the members on Ekaweeka, just take some notes about who your customers have been. If you don't have any customers yet, think about businesses similar to yours and who their customers are. Knowing your customer is everything.

Check back tomorrow for more juicy posts on the amazing world of marketing. And if you're already going nuts wanting to hear more check out these books:

Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force (Hardcover)
by Ben McConnell, Jackie Huba, Guy Kawasaki

The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing (Paperback)
by Emanuel Rosen

They will rock your world and bring you much closer to having a successful marketing strategy that will in turn make your business more successful - and... well you get point.

In my last post I began a discussion on the means of a small business to market itself. To recap: the post was started to point out how some businesses choose to market themselves, what was working versus what wasn't and the results of each. At the end of that post I noted that all businesses should know who their customers are, this is where we will pick up. Continuing down this topic I'll discuss how Dog Walker NYC got its start with a simple and successful marketing campaign.

For Dog Walker NYC I started by thinking about what I would need to see if I was a pet owner seeking pet services. I personally would want to know how much the cost was, how and where my dog would be walked, and I would want to get a sense of professionalism and trustworthiness from the service provider. Next I asked myself where I would first think to find such a service. I knew people would go to their local community bulletin board (which was Craigslist in this case) to look for someone nearby they could trust.

To look trustworthy I created a nice professional looking website for Dog Walker NYC. Then I started posting on Craigslist (CL) in the household services section. I made a point to keep the posts short and concise. I noted our most inexpensive price (bait and switch unfortunately DOES work - I fall for it constantly), and I listed our website address where they could get more information. By appearing to meet their price target and NOT looking unprofessional I felt most people would see a business they would potentially use and so they would be willing to explore our website for more information. Once we got them on our website they were ours plain an simple. Because at that point we had steered them away from our competitors' listing's to our website which looked professional, had all sorts of attractive graphics, had useful information, and tons of ways for them to contact us from webpage forms to our email address or phone number. Once they were on the website they were able to make educated judgments about what the company was and whether or not we were right for them.

I knew they would want to know: (a) how much we charged, (b) if we walked 1 or many dogs at a time, (c) what our policies and measures for safety were, and (d) what neighborhoods we served. By separating all that info into separate pages, the site was kept tidy and I was filtering out dozens of unnecessary phone calls from customers that wouldn't be a good match for us. At this point my customer had found me willingly (important) seeking my business and all I had to do was not screw it up. Notice that last point - they came to us, not the other way around, being able to have them find you is enormous - that is permission based marketing which we'll continue to discuss as this series unrolls.

So without getting into what comes after your potential customer has contacted you (i.e. how to not screw it up), lets recap:

Onward we go with this wonderful topic of marketing! In the last post I discussed marketing for service companies. I described how I identified who my customer was for Dog Walker NYC, where I could be found by them, how to get them over to my website (away from competition) and how to get them to contact me for more info.

Unfortunately it isn't always so easy if you're selling a product no one needs. I should really put some time into describing what I mean by "need" - I'll have to create a post specifically on its nature. As one of my professors at Berklee College of Music put it: "people need food to live, people do not need music to live". Some may disagree with his point but hopefully you get the idea. Consumers are not going to buy your art, hand bag, blanket etc. because they have to have it to keep living.

People do however look for things they love. Maybe it enriches their life, maybe they feel like it says something about who they are. Either way, you as the producer/distributor/creator or your product should put some time into figuring out who is most likely to relate to your product. Other people with a less direct interest could be turned on to it down the road if it crosses over into a mainstream trend, but in the beginning most products are only important to a handful of people.

Ekaweeka may not be the best example of a product in need of marketing. Ekaweeka is mostly a service, but as far as getting people interested, it has been much more along the lines of that product which only serves a handful of people. Since Ekaweeka only serves certain people, and since it is in a highly competitive market, we have to be very aware of who we serve and only focus our efforts on communicating with that audience. So hopefully you know who your product/business serves best and with that in mind, how exactly can you get their attention. The biggest problem with this kind of marketing - that is - marketing to people who don't NEED your product is many companies often tell you to use/try it. Some people might be amenable but most don't like to be told what to do especially if you stand to make a profit from their cooperation. This is where permission based marketing comes into play. People do like to take a swing at stuff especially if they have some kind of interest in it to begin with, but it has to be on their terms.

I need to wrap this up before it feels more like a novella then a blog post, so this will be continued in part 2.b, but get your marketing campaign into brainstorm phase. Know who is most likely to be interested in your product. Then figure out how you can ask them to try it out. If you get their permission they will be much more likely to want to give it a shot - especially if you have asked for some feedback, people love to share their opinion. And the best part about getting feedback is - they will see you are interested in making the product better for them and your product will be loved more when it has been cultivated by the very people it is for.

The to-do list just keeps coming. We fixed (cross your fingers) the image bugs, the blog system is about to go in, and our browse system is still getting many upgrades. Still with all that happening many of our hopes lay waiting, here are some:

1. User Item Management - for managing and organizing items by type.
2. Account statistics
3. Multiple Accounts (you know instead of managing 5 accounts with 5 emails and 5 passwords...
4. Profile Category Selection (we're still not sure if this is a good idea).
5. Email Profile to Someone.
6. Pending Friend Requests.
7. Message Drafts.
8. User CMS - think managing your profile the same way a newspaper manages their pages with one system.
9. Uploading Images to Edit Styles Page (so you can stop using photobucket).
10. Event Invites... yes yes it's coming along.
11. Photo Gallery + Comments + Pagination.
12. Email This (for photos, items etc.).
13. Bookmark This (for photos, items etc.).
14. Hide Photos (right now if you you don't have any the blue bar is still there).
15. Materials (for items).
16. Organize Profiles & Items by Content.
17. Seller Ratings

There are a few others but we consider them to be top secret. Muhahahahaha!

We knocked the photo gallery off the to do list in my previous post. We also got the blog system in, which could be partially responsible for the decreased amount of postings on the EkaBlog lately. But we're still tied down with this image problem. We hoped it was tackled with the image uploading improvements we recently made, but low and behold a number of images were knocked off anyways. We replaced most of them but a couple couldn't be recovered. This is definitely less then desirable, but we're hopeful and most users seem to be handling it well.