February 9, 2010 at 7:22 am · Filed under Daily unimportant sh*t
I had a not so nice encounter with a paid search company called search rank results ( http://www.searchrankresults.co.uk ) next to the fact that these people are severely unpleasant to deal with, they try to trick small companies in paying way more for their advertising then needed. To challenge them I asked them to proof their case and yes they proofed that they can get someone at number 1 in Google’s Adwords (my nephew of 12 can do that as well) but they didn’t proof that they give a better alternative then doing the advertising yourself. The way that these people get you on number 1 in the adword list for 1 keyword or phrase is the following:
They charge between £300 and 800£ per month plus setup-fee for £99 to get you on number 1 … so what do they do?
Suppose you have a phrase like “buy flowers online” for which they wanted to charge £800. According to the Adwords interface you can get on number 1 for £1 and that will show you ad on Google search properties about 2900 times per day in the active month of February (in January it was around 1000). The average Click Through rate on Google is between 0.7% and 2.5% (Own observation). Lets take the positive number: 2.5%. That will deliver you 73 clicks. Most eCommerce sites have an conversion rate of about 2% but let us pretend we have a good site and we have a conversion rate of 3%. That means that you will make 2.1 sales per day. That ads up to 65 sales per month, assuming you sell every day of the month at the same rate. So you have to make at least £12,3 on each individual sale to break even.
In other words: when you have a very good site with extreme high conversion rates and Google has a high Click Trough Rates, then you might break even if you make £12.3 gross profit after you have packages and send the products.
When you use more realistic numbers the results even worse. If you have a CTR of 1% and a conversion of 2% (% which are common in ecommerce) then you end up with 0.6 sales a day, or 17 sales a month. You must have a profit of £47 per sale…. I don’t want to be negative but a profit of £12-47 only to break even is for most etailers a bridge too far.
So please please do your calcs before you say yes to traders like this.
Peter
February 3, 2008 at 4:57 pm · Filed under Glaxstar, Venture capital, entrepreneurship
I must say, I’m proud….very proud.
Since a bit more then 4 months I’m working my but of for one of the greatest startups in this new era in the web and now we have launched fully and completely: Welcome Glubble to the world. Glubble redefines several categories and therefor creates a new pie on the web: classic INSEAD case stuff and very very exiting to be involved in! Try it and comment!
January 15, 2008 at 9:47 am · Filed under Venture capital, entrepreneurship
Walking around in the world of internet entrepreneurship you’ll begin to see things in the current web world that look like 1999/2000 (aburd valuation of some firms and everybody runnig after the same deals).
The only big difference is that people who are now in this space have:
- Seen the last bubble (most of us)
- Were involved in a company that crashed (stressful and fun)
- Were involved in a company that did not crash (great but seldom)
- or were saying I told you so (dads)
And that means that we entrepreneurs as the VC’s are more careful and scrutinized, and that will mean that the base will be more solid, hence no bubble… I like to believe that. Anyway, some people take doomthinking to a more creative level: Check this: this is hilarious:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I[/youtube]
July 29, 2007 at 2:55 am · Filed under INSEAD, Pic-a-day, Venture capital, entrepreneurship
At INSEAD we know that about 30% of the INSEAD grads will end up in entrepreneurship (a few years after they earned back their study loan at McKinsey or an Investment bank) while some claim that only 10% of the population have the character traits of an entrepreneur. Often in class therefor we asked ourselves: “Are you a born entrepreneur or can you become one?” Personally I think that entrepreneurship in the true sense asks for a very skillful manager who is familiar with HR, finance, management, product development, marketing and the works but the bottom line is IMHO: do you have enough risk loving genes in your body? Can you put all you eggs in one basket and start running knowing that everybody around you will declare you insane? The skill set you need but the mentality you just cannot learn: Entrepreneurial minds are born (nature) and the most successful ones will be very skilled as well (nurture)
Here is an entrepreneur test, try it and go for it!
May 29, 2007 at 2:40 am · Filed under Pic-a-day
Every where in Holland you will read in manuals or on signs “U kunt…” and then it explains what you can or cannot do there. And then you get a girlfriend which is South African and native English and she starts laughing all the time and telling me the Dutch are rude…
Maybe for the sake of International and interracial relationships we should write “U mag…”
February 12, 2007 at 3:57 am · Filed under Daily unimportant sh*t, INSEAD, Pic-a-day
I know I know. I promised that he should work on it but he!, just no time.
I just returned from my trip to Amsterdam and Dublin: Great fun. Dublin is the town I’m going to live in for the next few months/years, who would have thought that? Singapore was my dream but every dream ends somehow and this one will end in a thunder storm in Dublin! But the positives: I can do some random Kitesurfing!
January 30, 2007 at 9:37 pm · Filed under INSEAD
But OK, I’ll try to post a few things regarding the things I did the last 2 months. Next to graduating from INSEAD….
If you want to know what I’m doing now: I ‘m developing a survey for INSEAD to do some research about growth ventures… uhm no, I’m not becoming an academic 
here is the survey in case you have nothing to do: INSEAD Entrepreneurship Survey
More news will follow soon, cheers,
Peter
November 13, 2006 at 1:25 am · Filed under Pic-a-day
Well body surfing is cool and it depends which wave you get how cool it is after you’ve done it. This wave was OK, the next one however wanted to let me feel what it’s like to be in a tumbledryer or something!
November 11, 2006 at 1:24 am · Filed under Pic-a-day
Well well, that was a scary night in Bali. At least that is what they told me…. Well time to get some relaxation… it is even relaxed for you finances: 8 euro for an hour long massage … maybe we can get a discount when we hire them more than 8 hours…..
November 10, 2006 at 1:17 am · Filed under Pic-a-day
So we could go to Bali, allmost for free. Amazing. Bali is one of the places on earth I really really like. It’s beautiful, the people are nice and time enough to be sentimental about people you miss
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