OK not really an advert. Just launched as of today (jan 1) with www.ideas2earn.com the idea is to send an email everyday for a year outlining potential business ideas and how you might go about implementing them, finding finance, suppliers, marketing etc. Please can you guys take a look and let me have your feedback?
The signup section has some bugs in it, if you want me to copy you on the email can you drop me an email at brad@ideas2earn.com?
Many thanks…and Happy New Year
The visual design is okay, but you need to do something about the title banner at the top - the one that say “ideas 2 earn.com”. It looks really bad, and it’s the first thing people see. Also, bevels are so 90s.
You have way too much text on the front page - or at least, too large blocks of it. You have on average about twelve seconds to get your message across - that’s how long people look at a new site. Move the verbose “Today’s BIG idea” to its own page and have a 2-3 line summary of it on the front page, with a link. Make it more obvious what the site is about - the paragraph under “Welcome” is too long and won’t get read.
You have four different navigation bars - the top white tabs, the green bar under them, another (different!) green bar at the bottom of the page, and the bar on the left. That’s really confusing. Most people won’t even notice at least a couple of those bars. Just have one.
The “Sign up NOW” link won’t get clicked. Instead, have a box right there on the front page (and every other page) with a box for people to type their email address and a button that says “Sign up to our newsletter”. No password box or anything else. If you really need to collect a password from them, take them to another page after they sign up.
The banner for leafspage on the left (who, to be blunt, are evidently not quite the “new experts in web design” they claim to be) needs to either go or be toned down. It makes the site look amateur.
Brendon
Thanks, this is useful
What Brendon said, and:
The top banner needs work. The money is blurry, fine, but the fact that it’s been skewed and is no longer rectangular is amateurish. Also, the text is pretty terrible. I was going to say the shadow was bad, but the 3d text effect is poorly exectued as well.
The ‘Contact Us’ page looks odd in Firefox (fonts, border). Perhaps because it’s in PHP for some reason.
There is no readily apparent way to navigate back to the ‘Welcome’ page after you go to another page. Most sites have it so that if you click the top banner you get back to the beginning. Oh, I just found it, tucked away there on the green nav bar. I was looking for a more prominent link.
The way the text is presented is a little overwhelming. There’s a lot of it. For some people this is not bad, but for others, this will be a turn off. You could break it up a little, with images or subheadings.
And about headings, well, your web designer should know that html heading tags are important, though it doesn’t appear that he used any. They help search engines read the site and make sense of it. They also help humans too, if the heading text is larger, different colour, font, etc.
Since you have so much text (which is not a bad thing), it may be useful to summarize each page in one prominently placed sentence. That way a viewer can quickly decide whether to start reading the page or not.
Some links are dead (FAQ, LINKS).
I think the emails need better subjects (can I talk about the emails in here?) Just a quick blurb about what’s inside so I can know if I’ll be interested. I found the Chess one highly interesting.
MTK
Yes please talk about the content here, or in the site forum. Remember I have 365 ideas, some of which will appeal and some which definitely will not. If you think the format, or approach is wrong I would love to know.
Brad
Well, I just looked at the webforum and something about the design of it is off.
I’d also recommend setting up one of the open source forum packages to power the forum instead of the free hosted one (there are many, like the one here, phpBB, punBB, and I’m hearing good things about SMF.)
I make this recommendation for 2 reasons. 1 you’ll have more control over the forum and 2 it’ll look a lot more professional. Plus other reasons I’m probably not aware of 
.
I was also going to suggest doing the website a little more “blog” style. Since you’re putting up new content everyday, you might as well archive the old stuff. Then people that happen across your site can check out the past stuff to see what they missed (or maybe you don’t want that.) But, at the very least you could have maybe the past… month of stuff archived so people can see.
Earlytorise.com (which looks like they have recently TOTALLY redone the site, I had to double check that I was at the right one :P) has an archive of issues that goes back to 2000.
Something else cool about having it bloggy style is you may or may not want to have comments turned on. Then little discussions could happen about each new idea.
There’s my pile of stuff for this week. 
The best point made so far in this thread was from myury, who said:
Images are great. They don’t have to be relevant, even. Take a look at Joel Spolsky’s articles, like this one:
joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/20b.html
They’re about programming, but that isn’t the point. The point is he inserts interesting images every few paragraphs and thereby makes the whole thing much more approachable and readable.
Brendon
Several people have mentioned images. Not really my thing but I understand what you are saying about breaking up the text. I need to speak with my design guy and see whether he can do something.
Thanks again
Brad
[quote=“miltownkid”]Well, I just looked at the webforum and something about the design of it is off.
I’d also recommend setting up one of the open source forum packages to power the forum instead of the free hosted one (there are many, like the one here, phpBB, punBB, and I’m hearing good things about SMF.)[/quote]
MTK, believe it or not this is a paid forum…hence no adverts. I haven’t yet worked out how to centralise the title graphic and have a few other things to work on, but thought it was the simplest way to have direct feedback. You all have realised by now that I am not a design (or a detail) guy but I am trying!
I thought about adding a blog and then decided to just put my ramblings into the forum (community). I don’t want to archive the materials as the longer term plan is to publish a book with the full year’s content in it. I have thought about offering a members only area with the archive and a list of upcoming materials but that is definitely phase 2.
Lets get to gether and grab a beer when you have time, would love to talk about this further.
Ah yes. Speaking a language I understand. 
Sounds good to me.
As for the forum, according to the feature set, it appears to me that you (or someone) could make it match the look of the website a little more (one day.)
I’m a jack of all trades when it comes to this web stuff… So I’ll have a lot of “random” thoughts on things.
Be sure to bring a notebook on the beer trip. You’ll need it. 
I really like today’s idea about starting ironing business.
No, that’s not because I love ironing! but because it’s a very doable idea. It doesn’t require a lot of money, creativity or brain capacity. It’s one of those ideas I’d like to have in my pocket when all the people I know start the usual lament: “Oh, I really want to start my own business but it takes too much money, talent, skill… blah, blah”
This is an example of how you can start simple, low-risk, and build on it.
Subscribing to Ideas2Earn is quite useful to people who are in that limbo of having decided they want to start their own business but still need a bit of a nudge in the right direction.
Thanks Tash.
The goal of all the ideas is that they should be feasible part time and low cost initially but with scope to build scale. its good to know that you are getting some food for thought out of this. 
Edgar,
You really need to work on the subject lines of your emails. Today it even used an address that isn’t yours (easy2earn.com), and at least once you’ve sent it out as ‘www.ideas2earn’ without the .com. Taking today’s newsletter which has the subject line ‘www.easy2earn.com day 10’ I would instead suggest: ‘Ideas2Earn Idea#0010: Religious Artifacts’.
Jlick
Thats useful feedback, thanks. Was up early this morning…too early i guess. Also like the #00 format idea.
Thanks
[quote=“Edgar Allen”]OK not really an advert. Just launched as of today (jan 1) with www.ideas2earn.com the idea is to send an email everyday for a year outlining potential business ideas and how you might go about implementing them, finding finance, suppliers, marketing etc. Please can you guys take a look and let me have your feedback?
The signup section has some bugs in it, if you want me to copy you on the email can you drop me an email at brad@ideas2earn.com?
Many thanks…and Happy New Year[/quote]
Hello, I signed up about a week ago but haven’t gotten anything, should I do it again?
Yes please. Not sure how I have missed you. PM me your email address and I’ll make sure you are on. Do you want the articles you have missed aswell? Its a lot of reading if you do!
If anyone has the time and inclination can you follow this link and Digg me please?
digg.com/business_finance/A_new_ … a2earn_com
[quote=“Edgar Allen”]If anyone has the time and inclination can you follow this link and Digg me please?
digg.com/business_finance/A_new_ … a2earn_com[/quote]
Dugg you 3 times, don’t you love me or what? 
sillyBunnie
ok, but the other 200 people I needed didn’t so I guess you wasted your time. Nice effort though.