Giving Out High Fives

[cs_obd]

Hi All,

I've been building a new site that's dedicated to helping and connecting people with products and services that are worthwhile to investigate.

The site is called
High Five Guy. The theme of the site is to give HIGH Fives! to deserving businesses, individuals and creating a community that is dedicated to reviewing products on the market.

As an active member on SBF, I would like to invite you to join
High Five Guy Forums. Like SBF its to help others make qualified decisions on the products and services they use.

I hope to help all the members here, along side SBF, get the resources needed to build a profitable business.

[burste]

just joined. can i offer a suggestion? that grey backround makes it very hard to read and shows rough edges around the buttons. is there an option to change that?

[cs_obd]

Hi Burste,

Thanks for Joining m8 Much appreciated, the forum is growing steadily, and already have great members. Hoping to help more SBF Members when they join.

As far as the background and icons, I'm having one of my graphic designers create some new icons to go with the theme of the site.

I know you're a designer yourself, so your input is much appreciated. I hope things are going well in your business

[machine]

This is a good idea but apart from advertising support from businesses I don't know how you'd make money from it.

Obviously if the idea got big enough and enough people scored businesses you could issue a 'HighFive' seal of approval to those businesses which are good.

I suppose you could sell the seal of approval to a company if they scored highly, and if they sought the seal from you.

You could also sell the scores and data obtained (opinions obtained from customers) to companies which were concerned with improving the quality of their service.

You could also have a section of your website devoted to grading/scoring goods like the iPod or a Hi-fi.

Promoting the website and name could be expensive.

[cs_obd]

Hi Machine,

Its almost like you looked at my marketing strategy lol. Yes, I have a few milestones to achieve in growth, and I am constantly improving my market angle.

At the moment, the site is in phase one, so once I achieve a certain goal and its a good time to move forward with the several sales and marketing channels, then it will.

Thanks for visiting the site, I am working with the Admins here, and will be featuring SBF soon as a special quest on my show. So stay tunned.

[machine]

As there are already so many websites grading/reviewing products you might find that it is very expensive to get into.

Quite possibly the best way you can get your 'High Fives' seal of approval known is by setting up an agreement with an existing website/s so that people's responses to companies is both recorded and the companies are consequently rewarded by a High Five. That way you don't have to spend huge amounts of money on building a website that offers reviews of products but you gain access to the data they are providing. You could offer your HF approval on any number of websites which are concerned with product reviews.

Your main problem using the above model is to addittionally gain information on what the consumer thought of the company.

High Five is a great name, but if I may suggest, I personally feel it doesn't fully describe what you are trying to do.

The high five is linked with another idea - sporting success. It is not linked to a commercially successful product which has gained widespread consumer acceptance nor is it linked to a company's success in attending to consumer needs.

Also - there probably should be grades of your award as there will be many aspects to what consumers believe about a company's ability to deliver.

[cs_obd]

Machine,

Your input has been very insightful, and would like to thank you for them. The current marketing strategy is based on flexibility, so as any strong business plan, we have placed several checkpoints to count for many variables.

So Machine, what do you do for a living? You have a keen sense to marketing and branding, do you do that for a living?

[machine]

What I am doing lately is I'm trying to get a book completed on the topic of small business. It's a series of profiles of how people make money in small business. About 70 small businesses profiled.

I've written up enough profiles (over 400 now) to produce several books, in fact a series of them. It's keeps me busy. In between researching and writing I like to drink beer with my mates at the pub. I'm in Sydney, Australia.

Some of the small businesses I've profiled are absolutely extraordinary - people making $2000 weekly working 3 days per week, others making $6000 weekly working 2.5 days, others making $2200 for a weekend work selling icecream, others making wooden boats, adventure tours, wine bars, metal detecting archeological sites, oceanic art collecting, nautical antique trading, opal fossicking, gold sluicing (nice money, met a guy making $9000 every 2 weeks doing this), organic food, exotic fruit seeds, aquaculture, building gaming PCs, space art, traveling exhibitions, doll collecting, car exports (from Japan), selling silver jewellery (this one makes $200,000 annually) vintage musical instruments (met a guy who accumulated $350,000 worth for only $20,000), used test and measurement instrument selling (lots in this - routine to go from $500 buy to $3000 sell in one instrument), industrial equipment auctions, Bobcat sales, buying high grade watches at auction (fairly easy $10,000 a month if you know watches), boutique beer production (one of my favorites to research) micro-brewery production, car stereo installation (only the big ticket stuff), catering to grey nomads (older people who travel around the country continuously) and much, much more.

It keeps me busy, but just now I'm waiting to go out to the pub and have a few beers with my mates, it's Friday night here.

[cs_obd]

High Five! M8, That's Fantastic! No wonder you have great insights