Tumbleweeds

As you may have noticed, postings on here have been few and far between lately. This is partly due to other commitments (and UCLA going to the Final Four), but it is mostly because there just isn't much going on right now.

The site's development has hit some delays as the developers deal with fixing--and re-fixing--some design issues, and I have decided to save most of my advertising resources until the site is at least in beta version.

Things are coming along, however slowly. I encourage you to take a look at the updated site design here, and please feel free to leave feedback in the comments section.

In the meantime, I have been working with several organizations in order to develop mutually-beneficial partnerships. These include the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, which is a feeder into several job markets in the DC area and otherwise; MilitaryJobHunts.com, which helps military personnel transition into the civilian workplace, and InternZoo.com, which helps companies find interns (and vice-versa).

If you would like to get in touch about a mutually beneficial partnership, let me know. And if you're looking for a job or looking to refer one, make sure to pre-register here!

Updated Temporary Splash Page

There's been a lot going on behind the scenes lately, most of which has dealt with uninteresting things like the site's back end admin development. On a more interesting note, the temporary splash page has been jazzed up a bit with some color and the new logo.

Changes to the Logo

After a long couple weeks, I believe we have hit on a logo that works a little better than the current one, here:
Oana worked hard creating several good options from two sites, here and here, which sparked a great deal of creative energy. Both of them required a subscription or purchase, though, and I frankly was not impressed enough by either to justify the capital outlay required. I thought we could do better on our own.

I pulled a good amount of useful information from Ben Hunt's site on web development, which covers myriad topics and is a very handy resource. I began by reading his handy article on creating a web 2.0 site, which may very well influence how Referral Union looks in the end. His take on what web 2.0 sites do, which I like:

• They enable designers to shoot straight for the site's goals, by guiding the site visitor's eye through the use of fewer, well-chosen visual elements.
• They use fewer words but say more, and carefully selected imagery to create the desired feel.
• They reject the idea that we can't guess what people want from our sites

He also has a great piece on logos specifically. He covers shape, presence, weight, and contrast including several good and bad examples of each. Combined with these resources, I came up with some ideas and developed these logos









The small one will be used for smaller locations, icons, and branding while the larger one, which spells out both words will be used for other promotional activities where space is not a priority.

Here are my thoughts on how it measures up to Hunt's four criteria:

Shape: The logo, particularly the simplified one, provides a simple, recognizable shape. The synergy between the R and the U are brandable and the logo has texture without getting too complicated.

Presence: The logo makes good use of space and fills almost the entire area with meaning. There are no distractions--the first, and only, thing the customer sees is the company's name or initials.

Weight: Possibly the weakest area. Three colors are perhaps one too many (unless you don't count white, which my seventh grade art teacher might not have), and the 3dish effect might distract from the logo's overall boldness. Some of these distractions fall away with the simplified logo.

Contrast: On its own, the logo has good contrast--nothing really bleeds into itself. When placed against a white background, there exists the possibility of the yellow fading away a bit, so it will be important to ensure it remains vibrant in those situations.

I don't pretend this is the final iteration of the Referral Union logo, but I believe it is a significantly positive next step.

Site Updates #2

Manish, my web guy, came back with more site updates yesterday. While it appeals to my sense of compartmentalization and order, I agree with Oana that to most people it is cluttered, boring, and way too blue and white. It sort of reminds me of Google's personalized homepage, which is full of feeds, boxes, and other widgets. It also doesn't really highlight the networking function of the site. From the homepage, it looks just like any other job site, which is the exact opposite of what I want it to do.

Further, the site undergoes some goofy formatting issues when viewed by Mozilla's Firefox browser for some reason.

In the next iteration, we're going to shoot for something that looks a little more interesting, isn't drowning in a sea of blue, and better highlights the site's main value--the democratization of the hiring process by empowering current employees and applicants.

I am also thinking about changing the splash page to look something like this, which is simpler and more to the point. It would allow Job Seekers or Current Employees to choose which part of the site to go to right away.


Please feel free to poke around the demo site and provide your feedback below. If nothing else, it looks better than Google's original page, which is something....

Tinkering: Worthwhile Reads

If you look to the right, you'll notice I've added two new sections to this blog: Worthwhile Reads and Good Reads. The first is through Google Reader, and the second is through WidgetBox. Google Reader allows you to share selected items from your various daily reads list while the widget pulls all the items from whatever RSS feed you select (in this case, one that aggregates Venture Capital items).

I'll keep experimenting with each in order to (a) hopefully provide some interesting/useful items and (b) explore how or if they might work on the final Referral Union site once it's launched.

If you'd like to use either of these, click the links above. They were both rather painless to set up once I figured out RSS feeds (almost all news sites support them now). WidgetBox has its own cache of supported feeds (about 1000 at the moment). While you're at it, sign up for my feed!

Design Updates

I received the updated design for the site today, and I think it looks rather sharp. I had quite a few comments on the design and layout, but I think things are coming along well.

If you have any thoughts on the design, please feel free to leave a comment below.

AdSense, etc

I've decided to sign up for Google's AdSense despite some misgivings on how it sometimes uglies up a site. I'm going to try it out on the blog here to see how it works then decide if I want it on the actual site.

Signing up is pretty painless and really just requires a valid website and an address. It takes a couple days for them to approve/disapprove your account, then you're ready to go once you fill out some easy tax info and verify your bank account (unless you want your money sent in check form, in which case this isn't required).

There are a few options once you sign up:

• AdSense for Content, which allows you to put text ads on your site with a few different options, including lists of ads or boxes of them


• AdSense for Search, which places a Google search dialog box on your site. You get paid when people search and go to particular sites.


• Referrals, which work in pretty much the same way as an affiliate program

I don't really know how much sites make for AdSense, since their payout schedule is double top secret, and their terms of service don't let me disclose any of that once/if I make any money.

According to one resource I read about this, Google has a "heat map" of where readers' eyes go, which is therefore the best place to put up ads. Makes sense if you think about "above the fold, on the left" theories of newspapers, movie posters, etc.

So feel free to poke around the blog here and leave feedback on how you think things look with the ads. If I determine the cost (site uglitude)/benefit (cold hard cash) ratio is sufficient, I'll use them on the Referral Union site. Otherwise, I'll canx them.

For more info from someone who actually knows what he's doing, click here, here, or here.

Payment Methods: Visa, MC, Google Checkout?

Looking into various methods of payment available to the site's users, I've begun to develop an appreciation for stores, bars, etc who have a minimum purchase requirement for credit cards. Per-transaction fees are rather high: about 3% (depending on the company's status: e-commerce results in a higher fee) of the total sale plus a mandatory $.23 or so. This doesn't work out too well for a gas station selling a candy bar for $.65.

Preferring cash to credit is against every major credit card's terms of service, of course, which makes minimum purchases a no no, but I can see the logic behind it.

This is one reason Google Checkout is an attractive option. They're offering no service charges through the end of 2007, and it's much simpler to set up than major credit cards. Of course, having the Visa/Mastercard/Amex option adds some legitimacy and flexibility, so I will likely use both options.

If you've never set up a Visa/MC/Amex account it requires a bit of work. You need to go to the www.visa.com (or whichever), where you apply for an account. At this point, you are given a lengthy list of merchants through which you can set up accounts. Within less than 15 minutes of registering, I received four emails and two phone calls from said merchants, which is either nice or annoying.

From there, you have to just pick one, from what I can tell. There are several sites out there to help you, but every merchant seems sort of the same once you select the lowest rates, etc. I suppose I'll go with one of the merchants who will give me QuickBooks (retailing for about $200) for free, which is apparently rather common.

Design Template Coming Along

I went through a couple design templates this weekend, and it looks like we're coming along after some revisions. Some initial issues I never even thought of arose when everything came back written in British English instead of American English. e.g. things were written as "centre" vice "center," "CV" vice "resume," etc.

I like the color scheme and the categories, but I'm somewhat biased toward blue and the UCLA color scheme (Go Bruins). I have decided to go without advertising for the time-being, and I think it will clutter and confuse things. Also, I want to offer the most value possible to initial visitors to build traffic and populate the databases. After all, what's the use of a professional networking site if no one uses it... High database population and traffic benefit both me (ads in the future) and clients (more applicant/job choices). It's a trade off to go with less revenue now, but I think it will be worth it.

Splash Page is Up!

As of a couple days ago, the temporary splash page is up on www.referralunion.com. From the site, users can get a quick idea of what the site does and sign up for more information. As I start publicizing my site, it seemed like a good idea to make sure there was something there when potential clients went to the site, not just a blank page.

As I've said before, my web knowledge is about zero, so I just created an idea of what I wanted in PowerPoint and sent it off. Manish (the web guy) and his guys were great about making it look professional and usable.

I need to have Manish add a few things to it, including a link to this blog, but it'll do for now.

There have been a few problems here and there with the information going to the right place, but that is mostly fixed now. So go sign up!

Choosing a Web Developer

As someone with little to no web development experience, it quickly became clear that I was going to need to hire someone to put the site together for me.

After asking around to see who knew good web developers, it seemed like everyone did, and collecting random tidbits from conversations was no way to go about selecting someone to whom I would be paying a fair amount of money. I had just read Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and thought about a site I had seen awhile back, www.elance.com, which does the same thing for freelance consultants, web developers, designers, etc and prospective clients that Referral Union hopes to do for professionals.

With elance, you can can post a project and several (I had seven) providers can bid on it over a given amount of time (a week for me). Several of the bidders were based in India (hence the Friedman reference above, which talks a lot about outsourcing and off-shoring), and they seemed to offer the best value, in general. After they bid, I simply selected the one I thought would do the best job for the best price. A nifty feature offered by elance, which is common to other intermediaries such as ebay, is a provider feedback section, where each bidder is rated by previous clients. This really helped me make my decision and gave me confidence in the bidders' ability to handle the job.

Things are still in the development phase, obviously, but I have been very pleased with Manish at Web Integrated so far. The only road bump is the time difference, nine hours, which occasionally causes communication delays.