Hi all,

I am Nick Lotter, owner of Phusion Media.

I received an invite to this forum yesterday via email from Dylan, and I really think this forum is a great idea and a great platform for networking and discussion.

Everybody knows the state of unemployment in SA, and how difficult it is for youth to find reasonable employment. Those youngsters can benefit hugely from a forum and networking site like this.

I have just recently launched Phusion Media, but it is getting off the ground quite rapidly. We work primarily in publishing and media distribution, and our clients are mostly based in the UK and USA.

We also offer a professional Search Engine Optimization service at very reasonable prices, as well as other web based services.

As an introductory gift to the community here, I am going to offer anybody here who has not yet got their own blog or website(personal or business), a free professional blog installation and setup. I will include any free theme of your choice and 3 - 5 plugins to help get your blog ready and optimized.

So if you would like to have your first website / blog set up for you for free, then click on this link:

Free Blog Setup for mySmallBusiness.co.za Members

Looking forward to networking with all of you and seeing what else this community has to offer.

Cheers,

Nick

Nick Lotter wrote:


Hi Nick - welcome to the small business forums... Glad you joined.

I agree with your comments about the youth, especially high school kids who are thinking about starting a business, or university / business students - this platform would server as good practical experience for those entering the job market as well.

Any ideas on how we can reach more of the youth / young aspiring entrepreneurs? Get more of them participating on here?

Hi Nick,

Yes, I agreee with you that this is an excellent forum for networking and aspiring entrepreneurs! This is an answer to my prayers, and your offer, wow that is mind blowing!! I would certainly love to grab it. Let me know what we need to do here. One other thing, can I then create a link somehow on my site to link people to you for this offer, provided that they come and register on this site? I believe this will help in growing membership and assosications and networking!!

HAve a great day. Dylan, way to go!

Dylan wrote:

It's tough work getting a forum going, that's for sure. I think a good place to start would be to email high schools around the country to make them aware of the forum and the benefits of being a member.

Maybe try launching a high school entrepreneurship competition through the forum for the most unique business idea, or something along those lines, and let the schools in on it.

Set a few guidelines, and perhaps you could say that the idea must require no more than R1000 start-up costs, and the winner of the competition gets the start-up costs for his business idea as a prize.

Just throwing a few ideas together...

motsoaa wrote:


Sure thing, Motsoaa! I will prepare a short PDF and send it over to you to let you know what to do next. The idea of linking to this offer is a great idea. I will get it set up and we can run with it.

Nick Lotter wrote:


Yes - I have been thinking along similar lines. In particular getting University students involved. I started a thread about the development of this site a while back, so let's move this discussion over there -

www.mysmallbusiness.co.za/forum/marketin...ting-the-msb-website

If anybody else is interested in the free blog set-up, I have now added the link in my original post.

Cheers

Thanks for the incentive Nick. I have sent you a private message with further comments.

Bump @Nick

Anybody taken you up on your offer yet?

Hi Dylan,

Strangely, no.

Just to be clear so everybody knows what's involved in the offer as it stands:

1. Free installation of Wordpress Blog, which Google loves
2. Free set up of Wordpress Blog
3. Can be made to look like a static website
4. Installation and set up of theme and plugins to optimize for Google

Basically, I charge $50 and upwards for this service on other forums, but as a gift to this forum its free.

You can check out the details here.

Dylan and I are working on more offers as well, so watch this space.

Cheers,

Nick