The new FreeNeedle site has been relaunched – FreeNeedle. It’s doing really well at the moment, and after two approaches recently from people wanting to buy it, we’ve decided that if we’re not going to sell it, which we’re not, then it is worth putting some effort in to it.
You will notice that the adverts are more prominent, which we thought long and hard about. However it is supposed to be a commercial site and advertising is an accepted way of funding websites, hence the change.
We’ve also decided on the next FreeNeedle-alike. It’s going to be CraftBusinessInformation and it’s going to be a directory of information for people selling crafts. This is a huge area and one that is growing, so a good directory of information should have a wide audience. The search facility and the database that Ian has built means that we can include information pertinent to specific countries as well as generic information (for instance include links to information on UK tax for small businesses as well as US, Canada, Australia etc in addition to generic tax information…). People can then refine their search based on their country.
Hopefully it won’t take us long to get it off the ground as we will just reuse the FreeNeedle model. This is the beauty of the concept, we can just copy it as many times as we have ideas for. However, we’ve been disappointed with the performance of MakeForBaby so the model isn’t necessarily a sure fire success.
At the moment we are having creative differences over the design of the new site. I think that a sock monkey would be an excellent logo. Ian, needless to say, doesn’t.
I fear I am fighting a losing battle.