September 14, 2007

Over at Jonk’s Bargains I am building a section on How to Build A Website. It’s a little crappy right now but it includes all the resources I have used to get by so far plus stuff I have discovered since.

One thing I’m looking at is making money from your website selling stuff using a shopping cart software such as a-Shop (click through to visit their site.)

Looking at their site first-up it’s nice. It’s got a good design but - perhaps bizarrely - they have an affiliate advertisement there. Every time I see software on sale side-by-side with other ads and affiliate advertisements, it makes me wonder just how well sales are going on the product.

aShop has a lot of features, if you look at their list. The key one is it’s hosted and run by their company, so you don’t need any skillz to run the shop. All you have to do is put the product in the software and aShop does the rest. The kicker is price… $70 a month isn’t cheap. I’d personally steer clear, but that’s because a) I’m tight and b) I have (enough) skillz.

For people with a readymade market but no skills it’d be perfect.

I have recently signed up one of Google’s newer services, Notebook.

 You should try it.

Whenever I think of something I need to do, or a website I need to review more fully, I used to copy it into an email to myself. This wasn’t doing the trick though - I copied my to do list to a Word document just then and it was 2.5 pages long.

 So that’s when Notebook comes in handy. You don’t have to lug anything around on USB - it’s always available when you log on to the internet. It’s not complicated. I had had it just a few days and I love it!

For example:

One of my notes has a list of websites and the usernames for my to log in.

Another has three separate lists - one urgent to-dos for Jonks Bargains, another just to-dos for Jonks - the 2.5 beast - and another promotional ideas for Jonks, 1 page long.

Easy to save and edit, and not weighed down by too many features, if you luse the net a lot you should be using this!

I’ve just been having another cruise around the CheaperThanHotels website that I talked about earlier.

It has a bunch of stuff on the UK but I didn’t look around because I don’t really have much intention to go to the UK soon. It’d probably be last on my countries-to-visit-in-Europe list but that’s because I have already spent so much time there, of course. It’s a nice place, with London being a fantastic city in particular. It’s so cool to see the history that birthed our country (and by our country I mean Australia, of course.)

 But when my friend at work was looking for London Hotels he would have been extremely happy with it. As it stood, he made do with the travel section on Jonks Bargains which did a good job. But not as good a job as this.

We’re looking at 21 pounds for three star. Which in London is brilliant. Unfortunately on the website the prices can occasionally be ‘indicative’ but I’d make this my first stop for any UK planning, without a shadow of a doubt.

If you’re headed to the comedy festivals here’s the link to Edinburgh Hotels. Edinburgh is a small but lovely city. The castle is still active in many ways but was a highlight of my time in the UK. I really enjoyed it. The cathedral nearby is just as good, especially the Thistle Chapel. (I think that’s what it was called.) It’s a small chapel with the most amazing wood carvings you could see. There’s seats for the 12 Knights of the Thistle, one of whom was our own former PM, Sir Robert Menzies.

If you want to go see Rangers or Celtic I’d recommend this site for Glasgow Hotels.