Archive for the ‘web-based’ Category

Brisbane businessman turns disaster into dollars

Monday, September 30th, 2013

Brisbane businessman Michael French turned the raging floods in that city in 2011 into a successful online business by filling a niche that so many people don’t know they need until it’s too late.

Photo credit; johndal on Flickr

Photo credit; johndal on Flickr

While he watched flood waters near his home, French worried about the state of his office, which held his digital marketing company only a few kilometres away. That’s when the idea for his Bizeo app hit him.

Essentially a dashboard app, Bizeo monitors all available data from servers to engines on key machinery, to temperature to exchange rates and social media for a business that is experiencing an emergency like a flood.

“Business owners spend a lot of their time running around checking on things, but this does it for them, and gives them a single indicator that everything is alright,” French says. “Bizeo monitors the status and data across your whole enterprise, and watches everything at once.”

As many Brisbane businesses struggled in the aftermath of the floods, French realized he could add even more functionality to the app.

“Our cashflow was struggling as our debtors blew out and our sales pipeline struggled as many Brisbane groups went under,” French says. “Bizeo now plugs into your CRM, accounting and social media systems.”

Bizeo received a $200,000 grant from Commercialisation Australia last year and French used those funds to hire a business development manager, and file for intellectual property protections such as trademarks and patents and is currently working with clients in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Mexico and London.

To read more on this story, click here.

New Australian startups favour coffee shops over traditional offices

Thursday, August 22nd, 2013

New research has shown that many of Australia’s new startup businesses — particularly online stores — favour the environment of their local coffee shop or other ‘third place’ (a place for doing business aside from the home or office).

The younger a business owner is, the more likely he or she is to do business in these so-called third places. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, 52% of Baby Boomers feel that doing business in a coffee shop is unprofessional while 45% of Gen X professionals agreed. Only 38% of Generation Y professionals shared this view.

But while the future of business seems to be going the way of working in cafes, there are some drawbacks, including:

  • concerns around the privacy of conversations and documents;
  • security of belongings;
  • noisy customers, and;
  • being perceived as unprofessional.
To read more on this story, click here.

Online store lets Aussies buy American without the huge markup (also rakes in money for mum)

Friday, July 5th, 2013

Started in 2007 by Dr Carolina Tillett in Bendigo, Price USA is a site that lets Australians purchase things from the USA helping them to save a lot of money and allowing them to purchase items only available in the USA.

Working with partners in the USA, Price USA simply asks customers to fill out an order form on the website indicating what they want and from where. The US-based agents then buy the goods, package them up and ship them straight to the customer’s door.

Tillett charges the buyer 5 per cent of the total order price to handle the transaction and is raking in close to six figures every year from the comfort of her own home with relatively few business costs.

For more on this story, click here or here.

Website retailer rakes it in buying and selling virtual properties

Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013

Flippa is the premier site in the world dedicated to being a marketplace for buying and selling websites.

Founded in Melbourne in 2009 by Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle, the site has over 200,000 registered users buying and selling websites.

To read more on this story, click here.

 

 

 

 

Wotif issues net profit downgrade

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

Brisbane-based online travel accommodation provider Wotif issued a net profit after tax downgrade to between A$50.5 million and A$51.5 million for the 2013 financial year, some of which was attributed to its Asia Web Direct domain names being affected by recent Google ranking criteria changes.

Wotif was started in 2000 by Graeme Wood and has $1.161 billion in revenue.

To read more about this story, click here, here or here.

iSelect debuts, stumbles on ASX

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

iSelect, an Australian online insurance comparison company, made the opposite of a splash when it listed on the Australian Securities Exchange recently. It started at A$1.85 per share but fell and closed at A$1.56 per share, losing 15.7 percent of its market capitalisation of A$479.3 million in the process.

Reasons given for iSelect’s poor performance were that its technology was “not groundbreaking” and it already has strong competition in its field with even more competition possible.

To read more on this story, click here or here.

Australia’s National Broadband Network could lead to boom for online startups

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

As Australia continues to roll out its $38 billion National Broadband Network, which will bring high-speed internet to almost all the 23 million population of the country, some government higher ups are predicting a boom in online and high tech businesses.

“As the rollout of the NBN continues, the capacity for start-up companies, particularly in the tech and digital sectors, to create game-changing businesses and applications is unprecedented,” said Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, recently.

Currently, online and high-tech start-ups only account for about 0.1% of GDP and 9,500 jobs. But the sector is growing rapidly and a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) suggests it could account for 4% of GDP and 540,000 jobs by 2033.

The rise of young startups has seen them start to populate the ranks of the Business Review Weekly Young Rich List, which ranks the wealthiest people in the country under 41.

The list includes 24 tech and online startup company founders, including: software entrepreneurs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar at the top; PC Tools founder Simon Clausen at No. 4; serial entrepreneur specialising in online retail sites Ruslan Kogan at No. 8; Bigcommerce founders Mitchell Harper and Eddie Machaalani at No. 10; and freelancer.com founder Matt Barrie at No. 50.

To read more on this story, click here.

Rankings drop after Google change

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

Some small businesses dropped in rankings when Google changed its search algorithms a few weeks ago.

‘Many local businesses will find Google doesn’t position their entries as high as previously, meaning potential customers will have to scroll further down the pages of results to find them’, said search engine consultant Ash Nallawalla.

For example, a company that might have previously come up higher in the Google search results, now may have other ‘map-based’ entries above it, pushing it lower down the page and putting it below the ‘fold’ (tech-speak for the bottom of the computer screen).

Nallawalla says that businesses above the fold are far more likely to gain the attention, and custom, of people conducting a Google search.

What is the solution? Businesses need to optimise their online presence, ensure they have a physical address on their website, with phone and other relevant contact information.

View the full article here.