A while ago a good friend of mine gave me a book, The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton, in it there was a piece about Epicurus, a greek philosopher who proclaimed (already over 2000 years ago) that it isn’t money which makes us happy, but that the key things to happiness are Friends, Freedom, Time for Reflection and the Basics.

Was reading a blog today by Mark Boyle, the founder of The Freeconomy Community, seems they are implementing some of these ideas today, worth taking a look at.

Our Twitter account finally comes alive. Testing it out to see how it works as an online promotion tool. http://twitter.com/rubberdragon

One would think that thinking in education is something that goes without saying, but of course there are different approaches to thinking and learning about how we think and using tools to help us think is a whole field of science in itself. Kestrel Education are a consultancy offering training, support and guidance to enable schools to build a culture that supports quality thinking and independent learning. The website was designed in cooperation with another designer and built with a content management system to allow an administrator to easily edit content and add new workshops, training events and locations.

Kestrel offer a ground breaking approach to teaching thinking tools and strategies to students.Visit the website to find out more about thinking skills.

As well as building websites for clients, we also have a series of our own brand websites. Late 2008 we bought a number of domains and clients from another design agency which was closing down. One of the brands they had was Open Golf Accommodation, a website with information about the Open Golf Championships and related hotel and accommodation options.

www.opengolfaccommodation.co.uk provides us with a great mix, both golf and accommodation are popular keywords which can generate high value traffic and that gives us the option to sell ad space, publish advertisers articles and swap links with related websites.

When we took over the site it was a mish mash of html and frontpage, with outdated content and poor layout. To give us a flexible platform from which to develop the website we put together a standard content management system using Open Source Ruby on Rails, now we can easily add and edit new pages, tweak the navigation and include keywords and meta tags at the same time.

Do you like golf? Either way, take a look at the website and let us know what you think!

One month after the launch of our Photo Gallery solution, we have some positive results, one gallery sold, over 700 visitors in the first month, over 20 back links generated, Google Page Rank = 3 and a new order form and online payment facility introduced.

Following launch we spent a lot of time contacting photography related websites to request links, that gave us some initial traffic, we have over 20 back links linking to our website, thanks to which our Google page rank shot up from 0 to 3 in the space of a few weeks. That in turn has generated traffic from Google search.

During September we contacted over 400 photographers at ecademy.com and received a lot of positive responses, the main concern from potential customers was the lack of an online sales facility. That’s been fixed, Photo Gallery now has an online shopping facility, the administrator can create products, such as a print, poster, digital file, jigsaw etc.) and associate particular photographs with those products.

One Photo Gallery was sold and completed within two weeks for Workshop No.5, a stained glass window artisan wishing to present his collection of unique decorative mirrors, his new website is available at: http://www.workshopno5.co.uk

Online Promotion – The Next Phase
We will be spending more time on back link generation and email marketing through social networking websites such as ecademy.com

In addition we plan to advertise in a national magazine aimed at photographers, if anyone has any ideas on where is good to publish, please let us know.

Online Promotion Campaign Summary
Following the launch of www.photo-gallery-website.co.uk at the beginning of September 2008, our online promotion campaign produced good results:

• Our Google Page Rank = 3
• Over 700 visitors in the first month, almost half of them from Google search.
• Over 20 back links created linking to our website.
• One Photo Gallery sold and completed for Workshop No.5, a stained glass window artisan wishing to present his collection of unique decorative mirrors.

If you’d like us to promote your website online, please get in touch, visit www.rubberdragon.com for more details. If you have a photo related website we’d be happy to exchange links, please let us know!

There are lots of websites around where you can publish your own material, Squidoo.com is one which seems particularly cool and ideal for anyone involved in webmarketing, because Squidoo.com allows you to quickly create pages (called lenses) about particular topics and to include weblinks to your websites. Very easy to use with a comprehensive user admin, it’s also a community website so there is also plenty of scope for making contact with other Squidooers. Finally, you can earn money through the ads which Squidoo.com places on your lens.

We setup our Squidoo today, if you are involved in website design or have a website you’d like to promote, it’s well worth a look: http://www.squidoo.com/beautiful_website_design

Expect an update at some point on Squidoo.com performance.

Just launched, an easy website solution for photographers, graphic designers and indeed anyone needing a website. Photo Gallery Website is a great way to display photographs, it’s easy to use and includes a webform for people to make enquiries direct to your email address. Add pictures, presentations, photography, artwork, portfolio items or any images at all. Using the easy Admin Area you can also add categories, text and links to other websites.

There are plenty of free photo gallery solutions and photo blogs available online such as Google Picasa, Flickr, WordPress and many social networking websites, we would absolutely recommend anyone in web marketing to take advantage of them, because they provide back links to your main website, but they don’t necessarily look professional and they can take a lot of time to setup.

Why Choose Our Photo Gallery

Our Photo Gallery solution is designed to help you get your work online, here are some of the benefits:

• we can design it exactly as you want
• we set everything up for you
• no annoying advertising messages
• include as many images as you wish
• create as many categories as you wish
• unique website address
• search optimisation features built in
• add text content and links
• easy payment terms to suit your budget

Click here to visit our sample Photo Gallery solution.

I’ve heard so many good things about blogs, finally it’s time to give it go.

Location is Swindon, England, it’s a rainy miserable November evening, Rubber Dragon (my company) is my main focus these last days, we are seeking new projects and have run a mailshot to 300+ local companies; anticipating results over the next few days.

Met my business partner Steve earlier in the evening at the GW pub next to the railway station, our mutual project (recently launched) is Meet the Kids, a family friendly website with colour and animation designed for parents who wish to keep their loved ones updated about the kids, generally we boosted each others enthusiasm; in particular we discussed online promotion … and my action point was to kick start this blog.