ChaChing

We have a new logo for ChaChing! Company logos are very important as many first impressions can be made on a company logo, so we hope our logo can make a good first impression!

Our original ChaChing logo was created using web based tools, so for the redesign we decided that web based tools were just not effective enough and gave the work to somebody who specialised in graphic design.

We are happy with the result, our logo has changed to now having two colours and a little money pile for the ‘i’. Since ChaChing is, from a business perspective, about referrals and lead generation, and from a referees perspective, about making money, we think its a good fit!

We hope you like the new design as much as we do!

The Breakfast Show on Newstalk run a Breakfast Bargains newsletter which gives people information on various special offers and discounts available on different products and services around the country. It gets sent out a couple of times a week and every time has different offers listed.

They have listed ChaChing in todays newsletter! Check it the newsletter for great offers!

If you have your own business try and give them an offer from your business, it is a great way to connect with potential clients!

You can sign up for the newsletter here: www.newstalk.ie/newstalk/breakfast-show/mailing-list.html

Our blog has moved and is now live in its new home within www.chaching.ie rather than on its on domain at blog.chaching.ie. 

I had posted to the Enterprise Ireland mailling list to ask the resident SEO experts which would be better, hosting a blog on its own domain (as I had been doing – blog.chaching.ie) or as part of the main website domain (as it is now – www.chaching.ie/blog ). As you can already imagine the majority recommended that the blog be hosted within the main website itself rather than on a subdomain. The main reason for this would be that any inbound link to your blog would be a link to your website rather than being an inbound link to a site that links to your site – still with me ?

Ivan from seoconsultant.ie, was the first to recommend having it on the main website domain because of the inbound links it may generate.

Maurice, Fresh Web Consulting, echoed the above and also mentioned that a blog could generate alot of unique and regularly updated content – which is something search engines look for.

Ann, e-business.ie, mentioned the fact that having an external blog can get you some inbound links early on, which for ChaChing would be useful as its early days! She has used this with some success in the past, and thinks an external domain could be good for this. Maria, date-for-free.com, agrees with her but mentions that you should be wary of mass linking to the main website all over the blog as this could appear to be blog spam to search engines. On the topic of using external domains Mick Wright, VooDoo, recommended using third party online services such as twitter, facebook, myspace and linkedin for promotion rather than just having a blog on a separate domain.

Joe Molloy, hyper-typer.com, mentioned that managing your website and your blog via would be easier with them both in the same place and again echoed Ivan on having the blog within your main domain for inbound links. He also gave the very useful piece of information that when moving a blog the best thing to do is to use a 301 redirects from the old url to the new one for search engines.

Richard, Red Cardinal, again agreed with Ivan, Joe & Maurice

Michele, blacknight, made the good point that a sub domain can be hosted on a separate server which can be beneficial.

Lastly Tom, 2bescene, gave good reasons for both sides saying that having the blog as a subdirectory of your main website allows the blog to generate traffic to your website and also if your domain has a good PageRank it will pass on to your blog, and reiterated Ann & Maria saying that having your blog on an external domain will allow you to get some inbound links.

In the end, as you can see from the beginning of the post and also the url, I decided to move the blog into a subdirectory of the main website. By updating the blog regularly I hope it can get more inbound links to the www.chaching.ie domain and give more unique content to the domain. 

I will put a 301 redirect on the blog.chaching.ie domain to www.chaching.ie/blog, just have not gotten round to it just yet!

Thanks to everybody who gave their opinions based on their specialist knowledge it was much appreciated!

Previously to get listed on ChaChing you had to email us, then we sent back a questionnaire over email which you had to fill out and send back.

Now you can simply add your information via the ChaChing website without having to email us first!

Just go to http://www.chaching.ie/getlisted and fill out the form to get listed on ChaChing!

Or if you want to tell a friend about ChaChing, just send them a link to http://www.chaching.ie/getlisted and they can get listed on ChaChing!

Most of us are familiar with the concept of thinking Win/Win (For those who are not check out Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, in this book Habit 4 is to “Think Win/Win” – Very good book, I highly recommend it!). But here is a new paradigm, to think Win/Win/Win.

With ChaChing we can now all try and think Win/Win/Win. Once you make a referral on ChaChing you get a cash reward, somebody you know gets a product or service they need and finally an Irish business get a new customer – Win/Win/Win. So in a nutshell the way to beat the recession is to think Win/Win/Win!

Happy referring!

Earlier this week I posted on boards.ie in the “Entrepreneurial & Business Management” Section.

Basically I gave a link to www.ChaChing.ie and asked people for their feedback. I did the exact same on the Enterprise Ireland mailling list. Its a new idea and I wanted some general feedback from the business community in Ireland and I figured using the internet would be a quick and easy way to do so.

According to the good folks at Enterprise Ireland doing this is not spam.

According to boards.ie forum moderators this is spam.

Ok maybe a simple difference of opinion, that can happen in life, I accept that. The guys at boards.ie might have a different policy than Enterprise Ireland, which is fair enough.

Except around the same time as my post another post from a guy.. lauching a website… looking for feedback on the idea… is not spam! So my post, about launching a website, looking for feedback is spam, however the exact same thing from somebody else is not spam. Make sense?

Maybe its the fact that ChaChing is commercial? And it was advertising something that costs money? Actually no hang on, ChaChing is completely free. There is no charge to post an advert, and people reply directly to the company who posted the advert.

The point of ChaChing is to try and help Irish businesses make extra revenue while also helping individuals make some extra cash. To post an advert is FREE. Its a FREE advertising route to get new customers. How can it be spam when its offering a FREE service?

Lets look at the sentencing aspect of this, Im now banned for 4 days from that particular forum on boards.ie. Maybe thats not so bad, but when you look at this thread the same moderator gave a 5 day ban to a member for earlier for using foul and abusive language to another poster. So now according to boards.ie asking for feedback on a forum about something that you are offering to the Irish business community completely free of charge is 80% as bad as using foul and abusive language?

boards.ie is a great resource but maybe it should have some form of an appeal process? All I can do right now is send a message back to the person who banned me asking him why. Even criminals get a chance to appeal to a different judge, dont see why individual posters to boards.ie should not have the same opportunity…

UPDATE:

Seems it was not completely down to lose cannon forum administrators on boards.ie! From talking with the forum administrator in question he told me that it was down to a user complaining. To be fair boards.ie must listen to their users and if a user complains they have to take action. However when I complained about the original banning on the Open Talklist one person in particular seemed to know a bit more than he should.. I wonder if he was the mystery complaining user from boards.ie? It’s something I will never get to know the answer to, but sure would like to know!

As we mentioned earlier we have started taking some initial listings on ChaChing, so to the following companies who signed up this week we would like to say Welcome To ChaChing!!

Printing.ie – Printing, Graphic Design & Exhibition Marketing Displays, based in Kerry and finalists for 2 Golden Spiders in the past few years. We had some great business cards printed up by them in the past and would happily recommend them, especially since we can now get a referral fee! www.printing.ie

Elive – An ISP based in Limerick, this website is hosted by Elive so obviously we highly recommend them! Their offer on ChaChing is for €25 to anybody who brings them a new customer on their hosting packages. www.elive.ie

MovieBank – A fully automated DVD rental company in Limerick, no need to worry about opening hours, you can rent your DVD at 3am if you feel like it! www.moviebank.ie

From today listings will start to appear on the ChaChing website – www.chaching.ie

While the site isn’t fully live just yet, these are real live offers, so if you find one that you can refer then you can claim that referral fee!

We will still be ironing out some kinks etc, so bear with us!

OK they hated the name (Thanks Sean), but loved the concept. Paul mentions a property he is trying to rent, maybe we could see it listed on ChaChing when we launch?

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