Hi Friends !

Its been almost 3 months since our site went live. The journey till now has been very satisfying though we have a long way to go, but the initial signs and feedback received from our members have been very encouraging.

The membership numbers are not very high considering we have just started plus we wanted to check the functionality aspect of the entire end to end process and hence we were going slow in terms of advertising and promotion. But we feel that the time has now come to launch a full fledged marketing campaign which will help create awareness and in turn increase membership. We would also require the support of each one of you'll (our dedicated members) to be our well wishers and spread the good word to all your friends and family.

One major concern and feedback received was the downloading of homepage which was taking lot of time and which was impacting our daily visits. This has been rectified by changing our existing server to a faster one. Now the homepage is getting downloaded within 2-3 secs so hopefully now our members can access the site much faster.

We have also changed the layout a bit wherein we have taken the login section from the top to the right hand side this was from the layout perspective. The functioning aspects remains as is.

Also as mentioned in my last blog that we indeed have lined up lot of new features and activities which would add more value for our members and sticking true to our commitment we indeed will be starting quite a few interactive activities like the Quiz Contest wherein you need to answer all the 5 questions correctly and be eligible for the weekly draw where 3 lucky winners will be selected and they will get a latest movie DVD.  There is also an Invite Friends promo wherein a member can invite as many friends as they want and the top 3 members who has got the maximum no of friends registered will win a 8GB Apple Ipod. Top 10 members who have sent the maximum invites will also win latest movie DVDs. The promo period is till 31 December 09. We have also added a Poll section where in members can participate in the various Polls  which will be put up from time to time. We dp have lot of creative and artisic people around and to showcase their talent in the field of drawing we have started a "Cartoon" drawing contest wherein the best drawings  will be awarded with some attractive prizes. There is also a section for people who like to make guesses, this section is called the "Nostradamus Challenge" and as the name suggest this is a game of guessing the sensex closing value. End of the month whoever scores 1000 points will be given a Nokia E71.

Its a constant endevour to keep adding value which not only makes your visit fruitful but fun loving as well.

We hope you liked our new features/contests. Do feel free to write to us with your suggestions and feedbacks. We would love to hear from you.

Take care and be safe.

Cheers!  

DC

The day has finally arrived! Yes friends, the day which I and my partner have been eagerly waiting for. The launch of our site www.letzdobarter.com happened today, 27 June' 09 and this is the date which will be etched in our mind and heart forever.

The journey started somewhere last diwali when during one of our chai session, we started discussing about how we wanted to do something different and start something of our own. Since we are both working we wanted to take up something which we could do during our non office hours i.e working from home and not hampering our office commitments. After exploring various options we narrowed it down to "Online" space. We knew the kind of competition it had in stored for us considering the 100's of website getting launched everyday all over the world but the burning desire to start something of our own gave us the confidence to go ahead.

If deciding to start something on the "Online" front was challenging, the decision to come up with a website which was not only unique but novel was equally daunting.  We would have spent more than a week debating the pros and cons of the various ideas which we had come up with. Each time we came up with an idea we did a "Google" search and to our dismay we could find 100's of similar sites already existing  on the world wide web. The approach for deciding on an idea was pretty simple, i guess..it should be unique as an idea(if not then something where the competition is very low) and had potential of becoming big, which in turn would help us earn revenue later on.

After exploring and canceling many ideas, we kind of narrowed it down to " The Barter" concept. The idea came from the fact that we all have so many dvds and books and cds which on using once or twice, sits idle on our book shelves or various drawers. Plus we end up buying new and new stuff and depleting our pocket money,  so we thought why not start a site whether people can exchange products, something which our ancestors use to do before the invention of money. We knew it was different and pretty challenging considering the novelty of the concept in this modern scenario but on checking "Google" we were relieved when we didn't find any serious contender for this space. So we immediately decided on this concept to be our main theme of our website. We also did a small dipstick amongst our colleagues to check their viewpoint and we were surprised to get a pretty good feedback on the same. So we went with the simple concept of member uploading products which they want to barter for other products which they require in barter. One can search and on locating the product can contact the other member through mail or phone.

Once we were clear on the concept, our next task was to get the domain name registered and that's how "www.letzdobarter.com" was born. You'll must be wondering what' with "z", well someone had already booked the "s" with the same domain name so we took what was the next best option available.

Our next task was to find an agency who would design this for us and after meeting quite a few of them we narrowed it down to one which we felt would do a good job and to be honest they indeed have done an excellent job. The whole site took around 6 months to complete, little late then what we had anticipated but then we were pretty relaxed once we saw the final product. It indeed was a special moment for both of us and we would like to thank all our friends and the various support team who have helped us complete this wonderful site.

So without boring you'll further,  lets us welcome you'll to "The world of barter" where there is No buying! No selling! Only exchanging! We hope you'll will find this website very interesting and useful. So enjoy!

The journey has just begun for both of us and we hope you'll will accompany us all along the way coz it indeed will be a wonderful experience.

We have also lined up lots of other features which will be going live in due course, so watch this space for more.

Cheers!

DC