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The Walamu beta version is nearly ready and we’re out looking for testers. If you want to be one of the first to experience this truly landscape changing online service for college students, leave a comment here or shoot me an e-mail at rohailr [at ] yahoo . com. Furthermore, for those of you who want to know when Walamu will be available, you can sign up for updates at www.walamu.com. Be the first to check out what Walamu is all about, leave a comment below 
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Check out my Emurse resume right here:
If you are a college-age blogger or slightly beyond and are looking to get a semi-interesting post in on your blog, I would be happy to do a personal interview exclusively for your blog to discuss pretty much anything, but I would hope for it to be focused on the upcoming launch of Walamu.com. How’s that for a deal?
No, but seriously, I would love to hold a Q&A or interview on your blog as an opportunity to get Walamu out there in the community. If you have readers that you believe belong in my target audience, college-age kids, and that you believe could benefit from a website like Walamu.com, then please send an e-mail to rohailr [ at ] y ahoo [.] co m or leave a comment below.
If you would rather not have an interview and would simply just like to do a review on Walamu.com and let people know about the upcoming launch, I am perfectly fine with that as well. Thanks everyone, much appreciated.
In return, I would be more than willing to do a review on a venture of your own on my blog in the near future.
blog interview review walamuI haven’t been able to post a lot about what I’ve been doing lately because much of it has to do with specialized marketing tactics for Walamu, which I can’t reveal just yet. I will say though that we’re making progress and should even have a Beta fairly soon.
Today was good…I actually learned quite a bit. I wanted to make some extra cash so I went around door-to-door literally knocking on people’s doors to ask them if they would like me to fix up their computer so it runs faster. I handed them a flyer with all the information on it, but ended up shorthanded in gaining customers. I went to about 30 houses and couldn’t find a single customer. A lot of realization came out of this so I would actually consider this a positive experience. For one thing, I succeeded at finding out 30 different ways not to sell my services. Secondly, I realized after a couple of opening lines that if this line isn’t working, then it would be foolish to assume the same pitch would work with another person. So I kept altering my pitch and found some to work better than others. I tended to receive a flat response in the beginning, but towards the end I had customers asking me questions and saying they would hope to keep the flyer and call me back when they needed to do so.
Another realization was more market-based. I was in an upper-middle class neighborhood. So while these folks certainly had the cash, most of them were too highly educated as far computers went to pay for my services. In fact, I had a feeling a lot of them were computer engineers or computer savvy in other respects and already knew how to keep spyware from eating up their computer. So in those cases, it was like we both had a laugh seeing as they didn’t need my services by any means, but they were still amused to see my entrepreneurial spirit. If anyone is to take up on this business, I would highly suggest targeting wealthy folks whom aren’t so knowledgeable about computers, namely senior citizens in general.
cash computer service computers door to door halo tech squad income market selling spyware removalOne of the toughest challenges online businesses face is to gain access to the conscience of the potential customer. What’s different between online businesses and a brick-and-mortar business like McDonald’s is that the customer is continually reminded of McDonald’s presence as they are constantly bombarded with the big golden arches wherever they go. Online businesses don’t have this luxury. And in order to brand themselves, getting themselves in front of the customer and into the customer’s mind is essential.
Considering this, several businesses have taken on guerrilla marketing tactics to get into the minds of customers wherever they go. I feel as though online businesses especially need to employ similarly strong offline marketing campaigns. A few marketing tactics that I found interesting include:
Most college students face mediocre jobs because they lack the ever-so-crucial employment history and experience to land a decent paying job. They usually end up working for six bucks an hour at the local sandwich shop where anybody can be hired. However, most college students will take any job that promises large amounts of money with little or no experience necessary. No matter how ridiculous the job may sound, young people, more times than not, let the money cloud their judgement. One such company that thrives on this mentality is known as Cutco Cutlery aka Vector Marketing, a multi-level marketing company that sells high-quality (?) knife sets.
Vector Marketing has pissed off students nationwide with its deceptive recruiting and employment-related practices. The vague job listings for Vector Marketing and Cutco Cutlery products advertise great pay and flexible hours with no experience necessary for college-age youths. Nicholas Inabnit stated, “There’s a reason that all of Vector’s ads/flyers are so incredibly vague. Vector doesn’t tell you about the job until after you’re hired, because if they told you about it before-hand, you’d walk out the door laughing.” Students who accept positions with Vector Marketing attend three half-days of unpaid training, during which they are taught how to present and sell the Cutco Cutlery products. Further, they are told to list out their friends and relatives who are 25 years or older and have full-time jobs. New hires are encouraged to set up their initial appointments with their friends and relatives in order to create a reference list. After selling knives to their friends and relatives, sales representatives are expected to request at least three referrals that they may contact for future sales.
It’s important to highlight that Vector does not reimburse for the time it takes to make telephone calls and travel to appointments. Also, previous sales representatives stated they were required to give a $145 deposit for the cutlery products they use in their sales presentations. Most sales representatives quit within the first few days on the job because they quickly learn that selling knife sets that cost between $200 to $2,000 isn’t that easy.
Having been sued by the Arizona attorney general in 1990 and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in 1999, Vector Marketing and Cutco Cutlery have been ordered not to not deceive recruits. However, year after year I see their annoying flyers all over my campus trying to recruit naive college students. Therefore, last year I decided to take a more active role in eliminating their grip on my campus. Every time I see a flyer, I tear it down. And every time I see a note about Cutco Cutlery on a chalkboard in a classroom, I erase it. It’s time to step up and drown them.
Reid Morrow is a young entrepreneur looking for various creative opportunities to generate wealth. He is a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Information Systems seeking a Master’s degree in Telecommunications. Reid Morrow works at a large IT company and owns three Internet startups. Reid Morrow’s blog primarily discusses the Web 2.0 community, startup companies, trends, his personal business ventures, and his experiences in the business world.
My apologies for the recent lack of posting. I have a guest blogger that’ll have something for you guys pretty soon.
Marketing Outrageously; that’s the name of the book I just finished reading and I have to say it really gave me a different aspect on marketing and saved me from pursuing the typical bland marketing strategies we are all used to. The core message in Marketing Outrageously was to device a marketing campaign that is so outrageous and so shocking that you think it would never fly. The same message goes to the people putting together your marketing plan. Tell them that you want to hear an idea from them that they are sure you would never approve of. The book is written by Jon Spoelstra, who spent 20 years with the NBA most notably as the President and COO of the New Jersey Nets. A brief bio is available on Jon Spoelstra at http://www.usdreams.com/Spoelstra.html and I highly encourage you to at least skim through it. Would you believe that he used to be a shy guy? Find out what he did to overcome his fear of speaking and become a sales and marketing phenom.
Spoelstra outlines several marketing stunts in the book that proved highly successful. Some of the outrageous ideas highlighted in the book included having every man, woman, and child at a Nets game receive a free pair jockstraps (!). Another was to send a rubber chicken with a small note thank you attached to it to anyone who bought season tickets. A lot of these seem way out of the box, but that’s what Spoelstra is all about. Marketing outrageously is what will get you noticed with consumers as well as with public relations. There is nothing more powerful than shock-value to get the attention of potential consumers. Taking an unconventional route towards marketing is perhaps the only free lunch you get in marketing. The only problem is a lot of people are afraid to take that free lunch.
I’ve been coming up with my own ways to market outrageously with Walamu.com. So far I have some good ideas and others that people have told me would be going too far. Maybe that’s exactly what I need to do
I have several marketing stunts lined up and I will surely blog about them as I execute them. I can’t wait to see the look on people’s faces.
Have any outrageous marketing ideas especially for the college market? Ever pull off a spectacular marketing stunt? Feel free to let me know about it in the comments.
Recently I’ve been getting extremely frustrated with the fact that sometimes it takes forever to get something done by e-mail. It’s ridiculous that something that should simply take less than a day to confirm takes three or more days. It simply kills productivity. I’m not saying e-mail is a bad thing, just that it might not be the as efficient as simply picking up the phone. I’m going to start using Skype now for more of these tasks so if anyone needs to get in touch with me in a hurry just Skype me at rohailr.
In other woes, I’m extremely disappointed by the lack of effectiveness of Facebook flyers. I put up a total of $25 worth of ads at five schools and only received one response! I put up ads at Rutgers, Penn State, UPenn, UConn, and NYU. I know $25 isn’t a huge sum of money for advertising and I suppose 2,500 flyers at each school except for Rutgers (10,000 flyers) isn’t enough.
Other than that, I’ve accepted an internship myself with Noah Kagan, of okdork.com, which should be very exciting. I’ll keep everyone posted on Walamu and the rest (By the way, my designer implemented a new theme at Walamu.com and the blog looks awesome now).
I have just completed registering Walamu as an official business as an LLC, or limited liability company. I was debating whether or not opt for an S-Corp instead, but came to realize an LLC was the best fit considering I am not looking to investors any time soon and nor would I benefit from the tax advantages an S-Corp offers considering none of the income would be distributed to anyone but myself. With an S-Corp, the self-employment tax is only applied to the income of the owner, whereas with an LLC the self-employment tax is applied to the entire income of the company. Further, an LLC allows much more flexibility, costs less, and involves much less paperwork. It cost $125 to register the business as an LLC and I believe it is well-worth it.
I have begun a heavy marketing campaign for Walamu, one which will increase in its broadness as launch time approaches. I’ve figured out a unique way to leverage Facebook to initiate a sort of viral marketing that costs about $1 per 40 guaranteed targets. I’m not talking about Facebook flyers either, although those are very effective as well. It seems like it’s getting a pretty good response and people are interested in what Walamu is all about. Further, I was recently interviewed by Dustin of Street-Blaze.com about Walamu; the interview can be found here.
In other news, adpunch.org recently surprised me with a review on Writeonmyboard.com found here. I was very pleased with that and only found out after seeing a huge spike in hits and found out adpunch.org was the majority referring link. Although, I’ve been working on Walamu primarily, I haven’t forgotten about Writeonmyboard. I recently submitted a press release to The Star Ledger, New Jersey’s most popular newspaper, and am hoping to gain a lot of attention from that if it does indeed get published. One thing I’m upset about, however, is that I paid $75 for an ad to be submitted for Writeonmyboard in the Cool Site of the Day webmaster newsletter and it seems as though my pockets have been picked. I have not received a single e-mail since my purchase, nor the requested refunds. If I don’t get anything in the next few days, I’m going to have to talk to PayPal about it.
That’s right, Reid Levy who runs reidlevy.blogspot.com has moved to ReidMorrow.com. The new site features a clean and simple interface and all the fun entrepreneurial stuff your used to. One of the most interesting things about the new blog is something I haven’t seen in any other blog I’ve been to: the site features a recent comments section allowing readers a quick glimpse at the latest ramblings of readers.
Reid Morrow, the always enterprising young man, has tons in store for his readers as he continues to gain interviews with some of the web’s most extraordinary business owners offering some of the most direct and unadulterated advice from successful entrepreneurs. Just a day in with the site’s revamp and Reid is already kicking with a new interview with the founder of Soonr, an Internet startup that allows you to connect your mobile phone to your skype account.
Stay tuned as Reid continues to bring us the latest from the web and gives his readers access to the exclusive interviews he’s known for. No other site that I have been to has such in-depth interviews directly with the founders and CEOs of Internet startups and it has been a pleasure learning from each and every one of them. So check out the new page and catch the new interview at www.reidmorrow.com.