Google Adwords : Promotion
Posted on June 3, 2009 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
The entire history of internet search forms for a fascinating read. If any one of you is interested there is a book called “The Search”. One of the facts in the book is quite awe inspiring, it goes like this “for a very brief moment in the 90’s Alta Vista almost had the entire internet content on a single computer”.Its amazing how brilliant corporations Xerox, IBM, Apple, Microsoft have left even more brilliant oppurtunities during thier short lifespan, Xerox being the biggest culprit
Internet advertising today is more than a $500billion oppurtunity, no wonder micrsoft has realized that internet advertising can bring in more revenue than thier entire software sales. I wonder sometimes did Google think of this when designing its innocent search engine
Anyways coming back to Clubexplore, today we made the first step towards advertising. It was amazing how simple it was. One had to select three things basically, keywords which when typed on google will show an Ad of clubexplore, the content to be shown in the Ad and finally how much money per month you are ready to spend. To begin with we selected 4 phrases which had “adventure india” in it and have assigned a huge budget of Rs 800 a month. One more thing the major crtieria for selecting the keywords were thier cost per click (cpc), basically everytime some clicks on the add we need to pay google that much money, so we selected the cheapest to get maximum people for the paltry budget
After analyzing our current revenue which stands at $11.59 after about 7000 page views, the math says we need 1000 users a day to make Rs 10,000 a month. I am not sure how and when we will get there, but hopefully we will get there soon
Its been a Year!!
Posted on April 10, 2009 - Filed Under Our Website | Leave a Comment
I dont know if its fate, that I write the next post at a time when the bookings for Nano have just begun. It is definetely not something that I had planned
Its amazing how fast a year can pass. Lots of things have happened with the website in between. It might prove to be an interesting read.I will list them in order of discovery
a) The site was designed so as to enable people connected to adventure to add content to the website. However, only a total of 3 entries were made by faithful friends
b) A lot was done to counter this. The front of the website was changed to reflect that there was more content on the website. A number of features were added, such as an option to tell about an interesting place. However, none of them yielded any result
c) Then a senior of mine at college who owns a great company www.dotcomweavers.com suggested that an Indian user is very much someone whom you need to throw content at. We were unconvinced though assuming people who are hardcore adventure enthusiasts will be willing to contribute if they find this platform good. If anyone has read the tipping point, we were hoping for one
d) However, after months of no addition from anybody and hundreds of mails sent out to people, blogging in adventure communties at orkut. It was decided to change strategy
e) Strategy was now pure and simple to make clubexplore the top search for most queries. To enable this the website was made SEO enabled. Although the credit for SEO enablement goes to the chairman of the company (www.netgains.com) sumeet, who suggested that it was important to make the website SEO enabled
f)The next step was to begin adding content. A tricky part, we were quite busy with work and lazy at the same time to do it ourselves. Hence we decided multiple things. First we tried hiring good MBA grads from associations of good MBA colleges to work for us at less money. The idea however bombed, because the job was boring in the end and not the cup of tea for up coming managers
e) So we started hiring free lance writers, simply by looking at orkut. The idea worked partially, we got some content added and the website has started emerging in the top searches for many queries, however the amount and the cost at which we were getting it was not worth it
f) So finally we have hired our first full time employee and we hope to be adding a whole lot of content in the coming months
May the force be with us!!
The Day After Nano
Posted on January 11, 2008 - Filed Under About Clubexplore.in | Leave a Comment
Nano is not just a car it’s a statement of India’s brilliance, its a thought so powerful that it will alter the landscape of not just the car indutry but every known industry in this world.
Every now and then when something like this is achieved against all infinite odds of common belief it is bound to have the butterfly effect
Stories like Nano inspire and give hope to every person. We are no different
For months we have been trying ways to find spots for adventure in India, but have met with little success. Asking people to look at a website which has nothing to offer hardly seems like a decent idea. However thinking about it, it doesn’t seem bad after all, we might find few good people , you never know we might just achieve the tipping point too
Today on the day after Nano the idea of clubexplore has been sent to all our friends and even if a nano percentage respond our job is done
The Data Reality
Posted on October 16, 2007 - Filed Under Our Website | Leave a Comment
Well the website is up the backend is in place
So whats the problem??
Well there is no data!!
Why dont you do some surfing and collect it??
Well job kills, no time left to surf and collect!! Also no site to copy from (damn)
So what are you planning??
Hire some smart people
Wont that be expensive??
Nopes they wont, well not many people realize the talent that exsists in b schools can be harnessed by entrepreneurs, even we dint. Although they are in the learning phase yet are smart enough to excute any kind of work and at an affordable option
Thankfully for time starved people like us they came to our rescue. Well a natural question to ask would then be, dint you think of this before?
And the answer would be, “ofcourse we thought”. We also thought that we would toil hard, work day and night and add about different adventure options. However reality soon kicked in and laziness soon took over we needed to find an alternative.
And no credit goes to us for thinking this option. It just happeened when a person from the marketing association of the b school was reviewing the website. She simply said why dont you give this work to us.
Anyways NEXT STEP is to get the information for the website !!
Club Explore goes LIVE!!!
Posted on September 29, 2007 - Filed Under Our Website | Leave a Comment
Nearly 3 months after the development for the website began its finally ready to go live at 2.00 pm
A Website one may think is so trivial, there are hundrends of tools which can create slick websites within a couple of minutes and yet its taken us such a long time
Well there is another story with the website. Our first attempt at creating a website began in december of 2006. The idea was simple, quickly learn some powerful language of the intenet like perl, java etc and to toil day and night to develop unique designs and features and create a great site. We are indeed a set of very hard working people but then there is something called as doing smart. After trying to create some “Hello World” programmes on perl we realized the website would take a generation to develop. We then started looking at alternatives on the net and Eureka!! we found Joomla. Joomla is a powerful way to create a heavy content website or what is called a Content Management System.
Finding Joomla was like finding wings to fly over delhi traffic. We quickly began evaluating the various features of Joomla and how we could develop a website with it. However we realized soon that developing on Joomla a system that requires a very strong database support would not be easy. The wings were too small they just couldnt lift us off.
In May of 2007 the MBA grad who had started earning from a high profile job now decided that in order to pursue his dream seriously he would require professional support. Somebody who could worry about design, security and host of other issues. This required money and quite a bit of it. At that point a freind came to help, he decided to invest too, although he dint believe completely in the idea but he still decided
The Wings were back in business!!
Its one minute before 2 pm
See you in the virtual world
The Search
Posted on September 16, 2007 - Filed Under About Clubexplore.in | Leave a Comment
Who knows there must be some billion pages on the internet originating from some million sites. There are sites on every conceivable thing from details about ancient vimanas to how to grow fat. In this chaos of websites, how to come up with some website different from others?
We need to go back a bit in time somewhere in 2004, when one of us gestated the idea of Club Explore as an adventure club in the city of bangalore, directed at the students of various colleges in bangalore. The idea was to create a community of adventure enthusiasts, provide them with some basic training and then go out on weekend trips to close by destinations.
The club had a good response but could never see the light of the day. Why, u may ask. Each one of us dreamers stood on the typical cross road that life offers. Whether to choose between the safe haven of an MNC or risks and difficulties of a business?
With no experience and just a degree the idea took a back seat. Fortunately or unfortunately that only time will tell, the conceiver of club explore went on to join a very reputed chip design company in bangalore, while his friend went to join an reputed MBA school to enter the rat race some time in future and earn a comfortable income to make himself happy. Like the first love the thought of club explore never left the eyes. The MBA school grad made a business plan and sent across to various competitions but none of them showed appreciation for it.
Einstein had once quoted, ‘Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.’ We are no Einstein but then what the hell lets do it!!
And so the idea clicked in the head of the MBA school grad was the idea of the website and club explore merging together, and hence The Search came to an end…
The Inspiration
Posted on August 12, 2007 - Filed Under About Clubexplore.in | Leave a Comment
“It is difficult to begin a story in which each person involved has his own beginning..”
Why Does the story have to always begin from the beginning. This story we tell begins from our inspiration
It was one hot night in a hot city of India that one of us chanced upon this book called Fuckedcompany.com there is a website by the same name also. The book spoke about 100’s of dot com ideas which began in the dot com era and how they went bankrupt sinking millions of dollars of investor money. With each story came an insight as to why the particular dotcom failed, most failures were due promise of products which nobody really required, some were about promises which the distribution could never fulfill and yet some ideas were those which were ahead of their time and the technology could not support the same
In any case what the book did was to make the fortunate one of us think as to what if he were to launch a website, would it get (you know what)
Going back about six months before the same person read the book, he attended a lecture from one Mr Mahesh Murthy at 12.00 clock in midnight about how its so simple to start with a business by using the internet as a backbone, so inspired he was by the lecture that he applied for summers at the same company (passionfunds india) however the application was never accepted. The lecture did tell him that creating a business through a website indeed was a simple process.
This thought always remained with him. He would generate ideas every now and then and tell his friends about how he could create different websites. The most extreme of an idea was to create a website where one could leave a message for the loved ones before he dies which could then be delivered.
Going back 2 months before the same person who read the book and heard Mr Murthy he was organizing a inter college rock competition when he came across a website called rsjonline.com a simple website which had everything about what a rock fan wanted in India. The site was very effective in the manner it accepted and displayed information its simplicity and efficiency amazed this person
This story now goes back to the time after the book was read when this person decided that its high time that he should follow his dream. What began then is The Search
It takes a heart to dream dreams it requires a soul to fulfill them.
Who we are
Posted on July 28, 2007 - Filed Under About Clubexplore.in | Leave a Comment
We are a small group of individuals, something which is common between us is that we all dream big. Clubexplore to us seems a place through which we can fulfill both our thrill for adventure and the entrepreneurial streak we have within us. More about us in the later posts
