Q&A: Wonga CEO Errol Damelin
Wonga is an online service which has found a gap in the financial services market, providing short-term loans of up to £1,000 to users, and processing applications quickly.
The company was launched in 2007, backed up by £3m in funding, and came out of beta last year. I've been talking to founder and CEO Errol Damelin about Wonga.
Scott Adams on confusopolies
Scott Adams is best known as the creator of the popular Dilbert comic strip. Dilbert, of course, has risen to popularity by poking fun at the typical white-collar office that so many of us have experienced first hand.
Paul Graham - source code or solutions?
Paul Graham is one of the more interesting personalities in the American startup scene today.
Recognizing some of the flaws inherent in the venture capital model as it relates to consumer internet startups, he launched YCombinator.
Site review: NakedWines.com
Naked Wines launched this week, offering an alternative model of buying wine online, by connecting winemakers directly to customers.
In theory, this will reduce the winemakers' marketing and distribution costs and allow customers to get quality wines at reasonable prices. So how does the website shape up?
Q&A with Duncan Jennings of VoucherCodes.co.uk
Duncan Jennings, the founder of VoucherCodes.co.uk, spoke at our recent Online Marketing Masterclasses about - you guessed it - the role of voucher codes in affiliate marketing.
I caught up with him to find out how voucher codes can be embraced by e-commerce companies to drive sales, and to figure out some best practices in this area.
Does advertising iPhone apps on iPhone apps work?
Last week Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable trialled AdMob, the online advertising platform, where he blew $100 in half an hour, advertising an iPhone app.
I asked him whether it worked out or not...
Should you start a business in today's recession?
As the woes of the global economy have deepened and it's clear that we're in for some tough times that will likely be prolonged, there's still no shortage of people encouraging entrepreneurs to start businesses.
"Many great businesses were started in bad economies!" they proclaim. And they're right. Great businesses have been started in the toughest of times.
How much are your users worth?
As anyone who runs a website knows, your userbase constitutes one of your most important assets.
Putting a "value" on "users" and keeping track of this value makes a lot of sense, even if you're not looking to sell your website. Yet putting a value on users can often be difficult.
Site review: Fitnessfootwear.com
Fitness Footwear was launched by Luke Barlow in June 2005 as a way of selling Chung Shi sports shoes, which couldn't be found anywhere else in the UK.
Four years on, the site is doing well, and Luke now has a team of ten, and the business is currently outgrowing its warehouse in Hertfordshire, and has even launched a sister site, onshoes.com.
Having started as a family business, the website has been created on a limited budget: Luke has spent around £100k on the site since launch. So how does it shape up?
The information overload threat and opportunity
According to a study recently released by Yahoo, UK internet users are suffering from information overload.
As reported by the Association of Online Publishers UK, the study, which is entitled "Return on Attention," found that 70% of users "admitted to spending hours sifting through unwanted or irrelevant information."
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
