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| Our House |
| our house |
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| - About Us - Philosophy - ThreeVillagePeople.com Commitments - Business Plan - Marketing Plan - Seller's Commitments |
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| About Us
After years of teaching, working and raising my family in this area I have got to know a large network of people. When my children were still quite young, I started a small business called Pretty Posh, making hand knitted goods and handmade soaps. This provided me with a creative outlet and was something I could do while the children were at home. With other crafter friends we threw seasonal parties in our homes to sell our goods. The parties were a great success, but I loved making the crafts so much that I wanted to sell my products all year round. I began to look for new venues where I could sell my work and I joined a number of craft fairs. It was only then that I realized how weather dependant this whole business can be. People do not want to come to a fair if the weather is too hot, cold, rainy or windy, even if it is held inside. My first year of doing fairs can only be described as a disaster! My first fair of the year was badly attended because of a Nor' Easter, then torrential rain forced me to pack and leave two summer fairs, sleet washed out another winter fair and a blizzard descended during an Easter fair! After all that hard work, I had sold almost nothing and lost a lot of money renting space in fairs. But maybe all that bad luck was for a reason because as I lugged my wares through yet another snow storm to my last venue of the year, I thought ' there has to be another way to get my products out there'. I enjoy making my crafts, people love to buy them, but I can't make anywhere near a living like this, 'I wonder if I could sell on the web". Great idea! But I already have my own web site for my graphic design business and the only people who really go there are people I have already met and want to view my work. I could pay to be higher up on the search engine listings but I don't have the money and I am not interested in World Wide business. I am a crafter, not a factory and I want to keep it that way. What I really want is local trade, something like my home parties that have been so successful, but with a web presence. How about if I shared a site with my friends? That way we could share the cost, pool our clients, and we would be open all year. That way I wouldn't have to sacrifice my valuable family time at the weekends selling my crafts, or move my store from venue to venue and the weather could do what it liked. Perfect! In my graphic business I have had a fair amount of experience designing web sites. The idea that came to me for this site was just like it is, people in their own houses in a beautiful village making and selling their creative work. In my mind the home page looked like a map with winding roads, scattered with cozy little historic houses. Then I thought 'wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone on the map had their own house?' You could click on the house you wished to visit and go inside to view their work. After thinking about the site for sometime and then talking to a lot people about my 'crafters street, I began to think that it would be an even better idea to open the site up to a whole range of small businesses. There are so many people that I know that run their own small businesses from their homes or small stores, but advertising is generally very costly and many of these business remain relatively unknown. Having a variety of business on one site could be beneficial to us all. A person who visits the site to find a plumber may discover a whole wealth of artist, and similarly someone who is looking for a gift may find a service that they didn't even know was available in our area. Soon my one street of crafters turned into a whole village on the web, a village that shows you all there is to offer in Three Village and the surrounding areas. But what stops this site from becoming just a pretty form of yellow pages? I thought back over my years in Stony Brook and how when we would hire someone to do a job and the work was good then our friends would want to hire that person too, and then in turn their friends. People were always looking for people who came recommended. This site should be only for those people that have been recommended by members of the community. That way when you use my site you will know that you are hiring people that your neighbors have found to be trustworthy, reliable and a true craftsman. You could also have a photograph of the service people so that you know who to expect when they come to your door. So I set to work, designing the pages of the site, drawing all the houses, organizing the streets until my little online village was complete. I am so excited to launch this site, because I think that it is truly the finishing touch that will bring this community together. At last there is an affordable way to advertise in our community, so affordable that I hope that it will give people a chance to experiment with their own home based business ideas without having to go to a lot of expense. Here at last is a web presence which will have a high visibility in the area at a price that everyone can afford. If you are a shopper then I think you will be as amazed as I am at the vast array of talents that lie at your doorstep. And here is a way that you can reach them all. Philosophy ThreeVillagePeople.com is committed to offering great advertisements for a great price to enable the small people to have a voice. ThreeVillagePeople.com's Commitments ThreeVillagePeople.com is committed to provide quality advertising at a price that everyone can afford. It has been specially designed to give the small businesses a chance in a climate where the mega stores can often threaten their very existence. It offers a chance to bring this community and a place where visitors can find all the things they need on a day to day basis. Business Plan ThreeVillagePeople.com will go up in two phases...
Phase I: will concentrate on filling the streets with sellers. Much of this Phase will be free to sellers. See Price Chart. How will ThreeVillagePeople.com be marketed? - Google search - the name ThreeVillagePeople.com was carefully selected to be both descriptive and easy to remember, but most of all at the time it was created it ranked high on the list when requested on a search engine like Google. - Search engines - typically a search engine scans the contents of the first page of a website looking for words contained in your request. The introductory page of ThreeVillagePeople.com has been carefully written to contain all the likely words that people might use when looking for a business of service in the Three Village area. - Website links - many people who want to be on our site, and enjoy the benefits of a busy place already have their own web sites. These sites will be linked to ThreeVillagePeople.com in both directions. Search engines look for sites with lots of links coming in and ranks them more highly. - Sponsored links - ThreeVillagePeople.com will purchase a sponsored link so that it will be highlighted in the right-hand column whenever the words Three Village are submitted to Google. - E-mail advertisements - each person who joins our online community will receive as part of their membership package a fully designed e-mail advertisement with a link to the ThreeVillagePeople.com. You can add your own personal message and your ThreeVillagePeople.com street address. This will be sent out to each member's entire online client list to attract people to our site. - Monthly newsletters - each ThreeVillagePeople.com member will receive a monthly newsletter for them to forward to their online clients. The newsletter will give up-to-date news of our internet village. These updates will also encourage your clients to use the site. - Visitors' book - visitors to our site will be encouraged to sign our vistors' book so that we can send them updates to the site's activities, special deals, coupons and sales. - Bookmarks - visitors to the site will be encouraged to bookmark ThreeVillagePeople.com or to save it as a icon on their desktop for easy access. - Business cards - each ThreeVillagePeople.com member will receive 250 business cards specially designed with their business name and contact information plus their ThreeVillagePeople.com address. Members are encouraged to distribute these cards to potential clients. This is beneficial to us all because each customer that visits ThreeVillagePeople.com will be exposed to all of the businesses on the site. - Postcards - each ThreeVillagePeople.com member will given a set of beautifully designed postcards advertising the site which they they can send to clients who do not have an e-mail address. - Flyers - advertising the site will be distributed to members who need them to place in their waiting rooms and other public places. - Word of mouth - ThreeVillagepeople.com is such a unique and exciting ideas that we hope that everyone is going to be talking about it. When the buildings are all rented ThreeVillagePeople .com promises to be a useful resource guide for anyone living in the area. - Posters - posters will be placed in prominent positions around the Three Village area advertising the site. - Business to business - realtors will be supplied with packages of materials advertising ThreeVillagePeople.com which can be given to newcomers to the area. Galleries and interior designers across Long Island will be encouraged to use the site to look for artwork. - Mass mailing - ThreeVillagePeople.com will carry out mass mailings to attract people to our site. - Newspaper advertisements - advertisements for ThreeVillagePeople.com will be taken out in the local newspaper during the initial stages of the site. - Bumper stickers - ThreeVillagePeople will supply all members with bumper stickers advertising the site. - Window clings - will be given to shops and offices to show that they have the communities 'vote of confidence'. Seller's Commitments The ThreeVillagePeople.com community is based on community spirit, to make the site work we need a lot of people on it and a lot of traffic coming to it. For this to happen we all need to pull together. Community members are therefore responsible for...
- filling in and returning the recommendation form provided when you join |
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I'm Wendy Martin the creator of this site. I was born and grew up in England and moved to Stony Brook 20 years ago. When we arrived here I was immediately struck by the 'small town', community feel of the Three Village area. After only three months here we bought our first house in America. We soon set about updating our home and found that our friends were able to supply us with a long list of names of reliable people who we could employ to do our renovations. As the years passed people began to ask us for recommendations too. We realized that In this close knit community word of mouth was all important.
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We have only just started and we are growing every day. If you can't find what you are looking for click here, maybe we can help. Although the people that appear on this site have been recommended to us by people in the community we cannot be held responsible for their work. Read More.
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