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• General Advice (8) Give advice

  Advice given by khanjan 

  05.04.08 | 11:46 PM

  i think this is a very good idea and you have received some good feedback already!
  have you considered talking to career counselors at universities?
  If you can have them sign up for your service on behalf of the students at that university (you may have to start with a small school!), you are directly paid by the department (or college or university). the students pay for it through their tuition, "activity fees" or another fee (which universities are really good at coming up with :) )
  
  I would target the professions where competition is tough and the payscales are high - like Business or Law or maybe even engineering. Many engineers have worked on a lot of projects as part of academics or co-curricular activities that they would love to brag about - and your site will help them do that.
  
  "A Brand Management Dashboard that allows you to track your position on search engines and provides tools to improve your Google rank" - I dont think this is really important for a graduating student...but it might be helpful for professionals or sma…morell businesses

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  Advice given by brattenheimer 

  04.30.08 | 09:25 AM

  I really like the idea of providing assistance to students entering the workforce. I mentor and interact with a lot of these newbies (and my husband hires many young adults just out of college). I also think it's important to help educate these new young professionals on what should be basic work "do's and dont's," which often seems to be inherently missing in young job candidates. For example, don't go to an interview dressed up like you're going to a club (e.g., wearing tight, low-cut clothing), don't tell a potential employer you're available to start working at 4 pm when you're applying for a salaried, full-time job that starts at 8 am, do expect that a salaried job may sometimes mean having to work longer than 8 hours a day, and do go into an interview having researched the company and position you're interviewing for so you can develop thoughtful responses beyond, "I just think the job sounds interesting."
  
  As a professional working in the advertising/marketing world for over 9 yrs, I know how powerful a strong brand presence is. Though a brand …morecan easily fall flat if it lacks substance or if its brand promises aren't met. It's important to properly set-up expectations on both sides of the fence (candidate and employer), so-to-speak.

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  Advice given by jlutat 

  04.27.08 | 11:41 AM

  How about offering this service to small businesses (in addition to teachers, and artists and all the others listed above) who would like to have a self service web presence too. The sky is the limit...all you need are attractive templates. You can categorize your template selections and service anyone/everyone who has a need.

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  Advice given by SianMuir 

  04.07.08 | 10:02 PM

  I work closely with our career office so I know that this is a service that they would greatly appreciate! I don’t have any advice exactly -- rather some questions that you may want to consider (if you haven’t already)
  1. How will you make money? Subscription? One-off fee? As we all know students are typically price conscious
  2. Most students will need a lot of help building appropriate content (just ask any career counselor who has looked at a resume lately!). Can you provide that expertise and related to the above point can you make enough money to cover this cost? Are you going to monitor content? If not, how are you going to ensure a quality service?
  3. Can you provide any value-added services such as potential employer introductions?
  4. As any business knows, you can’t just build a site and get customers. I see that you will be providing ‘step-by-step actions to strengthen your brand on the web’ but will students be able to effectively execute this? Many businesses can’t! And if not, how will this impact the perceived value of your service?
  5…more. What barriers do you have to stopping anyone from replicating your business -- particularly a tech-savvy student do-it-yourself type using wordpress for example?
  6. Will you have enough variation of templates so it doesn’t look canned?
  
  I think you have a great value proposition – good luck!!
  

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  Advice given by Adreniline 

  04.07.08 | 09:21 PM

  One thing you may want to look into (if you don't want to charge money for it) - would to implement ads into all sites created from your site - in this way each site could potentially pay itself off (and the domain cost) over time.
  
  To figure out how long before you'd break even, I don't know, but it's just a thought,
  
  -Max

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  Advice given by brandyourself 

  04.04.08 | 06:29 PM

  In response to theshadow27 -
  
  We appreciate your feedback. However, consider this:
  
  Brand-Yourself.com will have a domain name availability checker built into the checkout process, so users will be able to find the domain name they want before buying. It will provide alternative suggestions such as YourNameOnline.com or Your[ ]Name.com (including your middle initial) if "YourName.com" is already taken.
  
  There are also other domains besides .com. Specifically, .name is growing in popularity and was specifically created for personal websites. For example, if petekistler.com is taken, it's likely that petekistler.name is not. Also, there are other domains like .net to choose from.
  
  We highly stress the importance of an independent domain name separate from Brand-yourself.com in order for users to establish a stronger brand and greatly increase their online credibility. Although the free publicity from petekistler.brand-yourself.com would be nice, petekistler.com is the only true professional route to take.
  
  Finally, I'm not qu…moreite sure where you got your domain name rates from, but in the U.S., domains cost $9 a year. And if you buy domains wholesale (in bulk), they get even cheaper.
  
  Thanks again for the feedback, and thank you to everyone else who has posted.
  
  We can't wait to get our business launched, but we need your support - so vote for Brand-Yourself.com!

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  Advice given by theshadow27 

  04.04.08 | 04:56 PM

  It is going to be hard to guarantee everyone their own domain name (BillyFred.com, or what have you). You might want to get some simple, meaningful domain like beyourself.com, or beyou.com and give out BillyFred.beyou.com (as an example). Normal domains cost $20 or so per year to register, which might be a deterrent for students or grads.

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  Advice given by hmoreash 

  04.03.08 | 11:46 AM

  I love this idea! It can apply to any type of job. The ability to add links to editorial recognition and achievements would be great or allowing attachments to provide examples of ones work.

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• Q1: We are initially targeting college seniors in "creative" majors that would bring more than a resume to an interview. Who else would benefit from our service? (2) Respond

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  Advice given by coverofnight 

  04.01.08 | 12:41 AM

  You should expand your market beyond seniors and try to look in to freelancer and other professions that would benefit from having an personal website that could display their documents and such

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  Advice given by Online_Learning 

  04.02.08 | 09:44 AM

  New teachers are another group that you could market to. With No Child Left Behind teachers have to do more things to get a job. In Connecticut for example teachers need to complete what's called the BEST program where they design a portfolio that contains examples of their work. I help many teachers with this. I would look into it as it is something that they are required to do. I know many pay hundreds for help with this. I'm sure other states have similiar initiatives.

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• Q2: What other features would be useful in managing your own personal website? (1) Respond

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  Advice given by TCBN 

  04.03.08 | 08:57 AM

  It'd be good to have a multitude of customizable web page templates to work with, that way pages between students aren't similar and students can avoid looking too cookie-cutter.

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• Q3: Check out our site! http://www.brand-yourself.com (0) Respond

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