Creativity and Profitability
by Fred Roed on 25/03/07 at 1:02 pm
4 comments
I’m (obviously) a huge fan of website design. I’m also a huge fan of entrepreneurship. At our website design company, World Wide Creative, we design what we call ‘profitable websites’. One stated objective of mine is to elevate certain sites to a new level of profitability by applying some creative ideas. This is not always easy, as there are often limiting factors (budget, time, etc.) but a big dream is to find a client that is to keen to push the boundaries of creativity – and can afford to do so. Either that, or we come up with a great idea and find the time to do it ourselves.
I’ve been scouring the internet and found some sites that have matched entreprenuerial inspiration with some fresh creative thinking, resulting in some online businesses that are compelling, usable and effective. I tried to find as diverse a selection as possible. Nice thing is, some of these didn’t require a huge budget.
Go make yourself a cup of coffee and spend 15 well-deserved minutes of inspiration.
Small business ideas online, creatively:
- Spread the Love: www.spreadthelove.co.za – great simple little idea for sending e-cards
- Entertainment Africa: www.entertainmentafrica.co.za – entertainment site for Africans, great stuff by Prezence
- Fly Stationery and Hardware: www.flypentop.com – internet / technology / entrepreneurism at its best
- Etsy homemade stuff online: www.etsy.com – online home-craft showcase, great simple online business that you always wanted to do?
- Moleskin diary gallery: www.moleskinerie.com – simple idea riding on the legend of a tool used by Hemingway, Kerouac et al
- Tagon: www.tagon.co.za – this is the company responsible for those little tags on the Vida coffee cup handle
- Ling’s Cars Online – www.lingscars.com – (awesome!) mega-successful site by a Chinese used-car salesman who achieved the pinnacle of fame after taking the piss on a ‘Apprentice’-like entrepreneur show in the UK. You have to see this site to believe it. Love it or hate it?
- Zlio – website creator www.zlio.com – we once thought of doing this. Thank goodness we didn’t.
- Jon Burgerman illustration www.jonburgerman.com – very cool illustration blog (only bad thing is no RSS feed!) with a Heavy Chef feel about it.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
Mark
Mar 27th, 2007
Some cool links there, thanks Fred.
Getting a 500 Internal Server Error for jonburgerman.com though, and a GoDaddy.com page for the moleskinerie.com.
Fred
Mar 27th, 2007
Hi – thanks Mark. Not sure why, those sites were working yesterday. Tried now and the Jon Burgerman one is working. The moleskinerie one is giving issues still. I’ll leave it for now, and check it again later…
http://coda.co.za
Mar 27th, 2007
Thanks for the link lovin’ to Spread The Love, although are you implying I should be making bucks from it?
Fred
Mar 28th, 2007
…why not?
I can see, however, that making cash was not the point of the project. Like Ideate, it is more than likely a labour of love – but hell, if you’re sending 20,000 cards a day in a year’s time, then if I were you, I’d quit my day job.
I reckon it’s a pretty cool site, so who knows?