Bangle Bangle Blog

We have started a bangle group on Flickr, a very popular web 2.0 site for hosting photos. Flickr groups allow people with similar hobbies to get together and share photos. Our group is called Bangle Lovers and can be found at http://www.flickr.com/groups/banglelovers/. It allows us to share our bangle photographs with other people who love bangles. The other group members in turn submit their favourite bangle photographs which give us ideas for what cool bangles are out there and how to take great photos on them. This is not only a great way to promote our bangle business to people who are self confessed bangle lovers but it also gives us a forum to discuss general bangle trends and styles with people who have an interest in the subject.

The main limitation of Flickr is that we only have a few friends that we are connected to on Flickr and not all of them would be interested in bangles. What Flickr does allow though is wholesale searching of other people’s public photos to find any photographs tagged with the words “bangle lovers”. A quick search revealed quite a few complete strangers who were as in to bangle as we were and we used Flickr’s in built functionality to invite them to the Bangle Lovers group.

The other great advantage of Flickr is that we can use it to host our bangle photographs and reduce our bandwidth costs. The following photo is hosted on Flickr:

Click on this image for more information about buying this bangle.

As a new e-commerce site one of the most important things we can do is generate free traffic. Web traffic is the lifeblood of any internet site and free traffic is essential for start-ups with limited budgets.

In the next few blog entries I plan to showcase some of the ideas we have had to promote www.banglebangle.co.uk online for little or no cost.

Click on this image for more information about buying this bangle.

The whole selling bangles online is a bit hit and miss with some days being more successful than others. Today was definitely a hit day as five bangles rushed out the door in a single day. I know Amazon probably isn’t that worried but for us this is another great step on the way to creating a successful online bangle business.

Click on this image for more information about buying this bangle.

Today we hit another milestone. We sold our first multiple bangle order! My goal of creating a global bangle empire is progressing nicely.

Click on this image for more information about buying this bangle.

We sent some samples of our bangles to Rachel’s photographer friend Dario in Sydney. Today he came through with some awesome photos which we have immediately put on the site.

if you ever need any jewellery photos takes contact Dario at Igloo Studio, 18-20 Victoria St, Erskineville, NSW, Australia.

The photo is a fine example of the final images once compressed for www.banglebangle.co.uk

Click on this image for more information about buying this bangle.

This is big because it means random people are finding us on the web and like our bangles! This is fantastic news and gives us great confidence that we’re onto a winner.

Today we sold our first bangle online! The fantastic first buyer was a friend of Rachel’s who bought elegant shine for his lovely girlfriend – who absolutely loves it!

In the most entrepreneurial thing I have ever done in my 35 years on this planet I have imported thousands of bangles and am starting an online jewellery business with my girlfriend Rachel. And before you ask starting an online jewellery business is not the first step on the slippery slope to life as a cross dressing web developer.

The site is called “bangle bangle” and can be found at http://www.banglebangle.co.uk

How can you help?

• Link to my site – to get a better ranking on search engines like Google I need to get other sites link to http://www.banglebangle.co.uk. The more incoming links I have the more seriously the search engines will take me and the better my ranking will be. So if you have a blog or a Facebook/Ringo/Bebo page or even your company’s website then please ad a link to http://www.banglebangle.co.uk. Any links you add would be greatly appreciated.
• Tell your friends – Sites like this can generate a lot of traffic from word of mouth. If you have friends who like bangles forward this email to them. Or even if you have friends who hate bangles but who might know someone who doesn’t hate bangles forward this email to them. And tell them to forward it on to their friends!
• Tell your friends to link their blogs to me – incoming links are everything for search engines and everyone who links to the site will be helping out.
• Make suggestions – I am new at this and any ideas or suggestions you have would also be appreciated.

It has take months of work to get this far and there is still loads to do so keep popping back every now and then to see how it is going.

PS don’t forget to LINK TO MY SITE!