WebVixxen is currently featured in Reader’s Digest article “Room To Grow” written by Jeff Garigliano.  I want to personally thank Jeff for giving me such a great opportunity and including WV in this article.  I have has such a tremendous response to the article.  And have possibly found the investor I was looking for for my expansion.  Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“It’s a frustrating situation for entrepreneurs, like Lana Antonova, who are putting expansion plans on hold and watching opportunities pass them by. Antonova founded a Los Angeles-based Web-design firm called WebVixxen in 2003 and has local clients like restaurants and interior designers, plus big companies like Electronic Arts and Ford Motor. Last year, Antonova was ready to take her business to the next level with a marketing campaign. But she needed $25,000 to do it. She tried four banks. A few places recommended taking a personal loan, but each application she filed put a tiny dent in her credit, and those dents added up. “It gets tagged onto your personal file, even though it’s a business loan,” she says. “It’s a catch-22.” One place finally approved her for just $3,500, but the 14 percent interest rate was too high.

WebVixxen Design in Reader's Digest

My marketing manager sometimes goes through Craigslist to develop new leads.  I have to say, very few people know what it takes to design a website.  And how much it is.  Sometimes I read some of the post my mm sends me and I laugh when people say: “Need a great state of the art website, nothing too complex, we need to be able to edit it, need a blog, need a picture galleries…$100 flat fee.”  Come on people, are you serious?  This is like a slap on the face.  I’m sure they get responses from the companies in India, who say they can do your site for $50.  If you’re looking to throw your money away, please call us, at least we’ll donate it to the charities of our choice.  But if you’re seriously looking to create a quality site, I would suggest to hire a local company.

Here’s an excerpt from an e-mail from the most recent client of ours: “I am debating on 2 other developers and the only reason I am even considering them is that they are $1,000 less than you. I
really don’t understand how I am getting so many different quote
ranges.  I seriously have got everything from $800 – $18,000. All of them are basically saying the same thing and all of them are guaranteeing that I will get a kick ass FLASH website.”

Now, I always tell my clients, don’t try to get the cheapest site.  I’m all for a bargain, so negotiate.  But at the end of the day, your decision should be made not because someone promised you a “kick ass” website, but because their portfolio is a great example of the quality of the work you’re after.  And always take a meeting.

More on this subject later…

Many local businesses struggle to find ways to promote themselves, get links, rank in search engines, and ultimately drive traffic to their websites. Most small businesses also have limited budgets making the task more difficult. For those businesses here are 13 ways you can promote your business online for free.

Google Local: If you don’t already have one Create an account on Google Local. Enter your company name, address, phone number and website. Verify the information with a postacard or telephone call. In a few weeks you will help you get a map listing for your company name or industry and town.

Google Coupons: Coupons are a great way to bring new customers into your business or remind old customers that you’re still around. Google has a free coupon tool that puts your coupon on relevant local searches.

Google Base: Google base is part of Google’s one box service. Google uses it to try giving the most appropriate answer from different data sources. If you are selling products you can upload feeds automatically into Google Base and often get preferential placement. You can also upload your business, or special event.

Yahoo Local: Yahoo local is a directory organized by category and geographic location. You can get a basic listing in Yahoo Local for free. People searching for your business or industry can find your listing

Get Reviews: An integral part of the Yahoo Local listings are reviews. Ask your good customers to write reviews for you on Yahoo local. Businesses with higher ratings will get preferential listings.

YellowPages.com: Yellow Pages have a strong brand name and recognition, and are still used by many people today. They offer a few levels of listings the most basic is free.

Press Releases: Doing something newsworthy? If you are you can always submit a press release for free at PRLeap.com. Be sure to check out their tips like 25 Action Words for Writing a Newsworthy Headline and Why Localizing a Press Release to a ZIP Code and City Matters.

Free Blog Promotion Tools: Does your company have a website or are you thinking of adding one? Websites like Technorati and mybloglog can help you gain exposure, visitors, readers, and subscribers to your blog.

Free Directory Advertising: It doesn’t get any easier than trying free advertising. Go to BOTW.org and sign up for a free 60 day advertising listing.

Create a Lens at Squidoo: Squidoo has a nice easy to use interface that allows you to give information to your visitors. You can talk about your business specifically or the services or products you provide.

LinkedIn: Join LinkedIn and get connected with people you know and make connections with people you don’t through introductions. Look at the new Questions and Answers section and try and be genuinely helpful. Follow the axiom of ‘Givers Gain’ and you may generate a few leads for yourself from your goodwill.

Email Signatures: Be sure to add your URL to all of your outgoing email. Try adding your mission statement, or a catchy phrase to help people understand what you do. Change it a several times a year so people notice it again.

Syndicate Your Content and Ideas: Take advantage of article distribution Services like EZineArticles, ISnare, and IdeaMarketers to spread your message and approach. Use them to bring leads to your site by offering things like free ebooks or PDF’s that they can download after entering their contact information.

For more tips on how to promote your local business be sure to check out my complete series on local search tips, tricks and secrets or visit my local search page on Squidoo.

By Dave Goldenberg

Published on June 10, 2008

Internet startups are generally as successful as a nerd in a singles bar. Ventures that get off the ground rarely get knee-high. Why?

You don’t need a deckful of scatter charts to do this, but you do need the willingness to make some difficult decisions now—and stick to them later.

The biggest problem I’ve seen isn’t lack of talent, enthusiasm or even funding. It lies in skipping a critical early stage of development I call the “alpha-alpha” stage, or “alphalpha” for short. Alphalpha fits into that frantic time between the Product Requirements Document and the alpha release—but to neglect it is to raise a building without first laying the foundations.

The alphalpha stage forces you to answer questions that inform every succeeding step. So when you’re ready for beta, you’ve got something your target audience will comprehend and remember.

You don’t need a deckful of scatter charts to do this, but you do need the willingness to make some difficult decisions now—and stick to them later. Doing this in the alphalpha stage is a lot easier (and cheaper) than trying to build the foundation after you’ve raised the first story.

Unfortunately people in startup companies want to get along with each other, so they avoid conflict. They pretend to agree on these “alphalpha” fundamentals, but then proceed to pull in different directions. This is where our help often comes in. We tie our clients to a chair, in a manner of speaking, and guide them through the deliberations required to clearly answer the five alphalpha questions:

Alphalpha question #1: What are we?

It’s the most basic question, but you’d be surprised how many blank stares it draws—or worse, conflicting answers. (My favorite: “We’re whatever our customers want us to be.”)

The question here is really: “What category are we in?” Are we a medical information site? A restaurant recommendation engine? A travel booking service for retirees? No one defies categorization. Even if you don’t put yourself into a category, consumers will.

If you really do constitute a new category—(Parking lot reviews! Singing lessons for dogs!) that’s great, but your job just got a whole lot harder, because you’ll have to make sure people truly understand your unique value proposition—which, by the way, you should be able to sum up in a single clear sentence. I had a client that offered online music subscriptions, but people were unable to grasp from their site what that meant. Research revealed the best way to explain it was with an analogy: An unlimited online jukebox for a low monthly fee. Suddenly, people understood it. (Unfortunately they didn’t want it, but that’s another story.)

The “about us” page should offer a terse declaration of the value proposition, but too often you’ll instead find a lot of blather that makes you work to find out what’s going on. For example: “[We] provide decision support solutions that enable stakeholders to objectively identify the software products that best fit their company’s unique business and systems requirements, and that contribute most effectively to superior business performance.” Uh-huh.

I counted hundreds of companies claiming to be “technology solutions providers” before I got bored. Well, I guess it’s better than being a “technology problems provider.”

Alphalpha question #2: Who are we for?

“All for one and one for all” might be fine for the Three Musketeers, but it’s a dreadful web strategy. Define your target audience as narrowly as possible. Consumers will know instantly whether you’re talking to them.

That’s why porn is the leading online revenue generator—they’ve mastered the art of catering to very specific individual, er, tastes. On a more savory plane, I’ve found commercial sites dedicated to left-handed toys, pickles, wide shoes, sewing thimbles and velvet paintings. Even one just for velvet Elvises.

In short, if you build it, they won’t care—but if you build it just for them, they will come. Take advantage of the web’s amazing power to target and segment and make two clearly targeted versions. Or three. Or ten.

Alphalpha question #3: How are we different?

Positioning is the least understood but most important part of the alphalpha stage. I’m often handed a convoluted, omnibus “positioning statement” that’s been hammered out through painful negotiation. The team reached consensus on it? Good—have it bronzed. But it’s going to be no help in building your business.

The truth is, the words in your positioning statement don’t really matter, because you’re never going to use them in your communications. Positioning is differentiation from the others in your category. (The only dating site for nerds, let’s say. Or medical advice from real witch doctors.) To be viable, your position must be unique in its category, clear, and, most importantly, relevant to your target audience.

Unique means, well, unique. I came across a new site designed to let you “create debates, add arguments, craft rebuttals, and vote with your click.” How is that different from every other site on the internet?

Positioning can be a tough one, and it often takes outside help. Deciding who you are means sticking a flag in the ground, grabbing the bull by the horns—or whatever tired analogy you prefer—but you’ve got to do it. Case in point: You may remember the case of the online calendar site that got mowed down by the launch of Google Calendar. Despite claims of being blindsided, they saw it coming a year out and had the time to differentiate the product or to choose a narrower target audience. Frankly, few executives do this willingly, because it may require leaving target audiences and market segments behind, at least for now. But positioning, as they say, is the art of sacrifice.

Alphalpha question #4: What are we called?

If positioning is under-emphasized, it’s the opposite with naming. I’ve seen companies turn themselves inside out to find a name that says everything about them. And I have learned that, no matter how many names we come up with in the first round of a naming exercise, they want more. They’re looking for the right name.

But I will let you in on a secret. There is no ‘right name’.

Your company attributes don’t come from your name. They are given to your name over time by your products and communications. What values, after all, are inherent in out-there names like Google or BlueFly?

Your name can be descriptive (NothingButPotatoes.com), a lofty allusion (BrownEyedPotato.com) or a made-up word (Spuddleton.com). It should be easy to pronounce and spell (Puhtataz.com would get mashed out there) and reflect your personality. That’s all. It’s what you put behind the name that counts.

One last thing: be careful. For example, a site for tracking down celebrity agents, whoRepresents.com, forgot that we don’t type urls with capital letters.

Alphalpha question #5: What are we like?

Brands and companies, like people, are recognizable by their personalities. If yours is distinctive, people will come to recognize and relate to you.

A bouquet of blandly generic positive values will get you nowhere. I can’t tell you how many clients have described their businesses as “smart, confident, and friendly”. Well sure, who wants to be dumb, insecure, and a jerk? But you can be book smart or worldly smart or funny smart. Which one are you? The more clearly you define it, the easier it is to be it.

This is not to say one is inherently better than the others. eHarmony.com, the online matchmaker, has a warm, sincere personality that creates a romantic feel. Their competitor Chemistry.com has a spicy attitude that is as much about mating as finding a mate. Which one is right? Both. They’re just different from one another—and different is good.

Out of your personality will grow your look, feel, and voice, which need to be written down, studied, and absorbed by everyone who creates on your behalf. Think this sounds contrived? Well it is—contrived to create a clear and consistent impression of who you are. Without that, you are likely to end up in a place I call Pale Blueland. It’s the sky-blue look-and-feel that dominates Yahoo!, Google, YouTube, Windows Live, MSN, Wikipedia, and Facebook. That’s seven of the top ten websites. You might think it’s good to be in their company. But you’ll just be hiding among them like you’re wearing camouflage.

Alphalpha follow-up question: Can you stick to it?

You have your alphalpha answers in a deck—now incorporate them into your site. Too many companies are brave in the artificial light of the PowerPoint projector, but in the glare of the marketplace their determination wilts like week-old arugula.

We’ve been helping web startups ask and answer these questions almost since the start of the web itself. We know this is not rocket science—it’s harder. After all, the laws of thermodynamics behave pretty much predictably, but co-workers and markets—forget it. So it helps to designate someone to be your alphalpha advocate, to make sure the hard work you’ve done is built into every aspect of your product and your brand. Someone smart and strong. You.

After all, if you’ve stuck with me this far, you’re going to be asking all the right questions.

I’m somewhat new to WordPress, even thought I have created blogs for some of my clients. I started designing websites in 1998. My first site looked like something out of a web nightmare, I wish I kept it. My ex-husband, who basically got me hooked on computers, called me about two years ago, after seeing what my company does now, and his words were: “Honey, wow, you really did take this seriously. I never thought you had it in you.” I went to school, and bought a lot of books, designers know the books I’m talking about, the bibles we call it. I read and read and did tutorial after tutorial. In 2003 I leaped…you know that quote: “Leap and the net will appear.” Oh my, was I terrified to start my own business, I wasn’t even well versed in some areas, like programming/scripting, that was so foreign to me. But guess what the net did appear.

It’s a tough decision to start your own business, with no money in the pocket and no one to help you. I did a lot of researched before I started, and that just scared me more and more. If someone told me 4 years ago that my business would become so successful today, I would simply laugh.

I can still remember my first job, it was for a friend of mine, who just finished a movie. He was a director, with no budget, but very ambitious. It was my first job, so how could I be picky? We met, I totally sold him on it, but inside I was so scared. I still remember the day my friend sent me the links to the reference sites, the sites he liked, and my jaw dropped to the ground. I thought to myself: “How do you do that? I didn’t see that in the Bibles.”

My instinct was to give him his $500 back and forget about starting a business…it wasn’t too late. But I had what’s called “pride”. And I’m a survivor and not a quitter, so I buried myself in Flash & Dreamweaver Bible for weeks. With my persistence I ended up designing a site, but it was far from beautiful, but a site I will always remember. That site made me hungry for knowledge, I wanted to learn and become really good at it. Thus the computer nerd was born.

I still have so much to learn, and I’m learning everyday, but I’m not able to apply my knowledge to something I absolutely love to do. I have since helped quite a few of my friends to start their own businesses, not necessarily web design, but other businesses. My outlook is this…you have to take the step in order to discover where it will lead you. It always brings me back to – “Leap and the net will appear.”

To be continued…