I need some advice: Marketing ThriftShelf

So, ThriftShelf - the shopping comparison site for books I spent a good while building over the past month - is now happily up and running. I've even been pleasantly surprised by a few friends mentioning they've checked it out and found it useful.

Now, my background is techie, so I'm pretty comfortable building websites, especially the technical side (integration, databases, getting everything working, and so on). And I know enough about design not to make a mess, even if it's not exactly beautiful (well, except in my eyes of course!).

But, as a techie, I have to admit I know very little about marketing. Sure, I've built social networking plugins into my site to leverage the social base and drive some visits to my site. And I have an idea about getting bloggers talking about it, and crucially, building up the base of links around the web that point back to ThriftShelf.

But here's where I need your help, dear reader! I need some practical advice about who, where and how to market ThriftShelf and get the word out. I'm casting out for any marketing minded person who'd like to throw me a few words of advice. Now, to be honest, I can really pay (for now at least), but I'm always willing to network and refer work.

I can be reached either by commenting on this blog post (where your response will be public) or by using the contact page on ThriftShelf. Thanks in advace!

Melbourne Film Club

As some of you know, I started the Melbourne Film Club way back in September of last year (time flies as always). For those of you who don't know, MFC is a social club where we go and see a couple films a month, usually followed by dinner and drinks where we get to chat about the film.

As part of our plan for conquering the galaxy, I've opened a blog for the club with a monthly newsletter, film reviews and related articles:

http://melbournefilmclub.blogspot.com/

There's several things I want to achieve from the MFC blog. Firstly, I want to be able to provide the membership (just shy of 200) with a monthly newsletter, but without email spamming (and without getting lost in some unread inbox). A blog works on an opt-in basis, so it adds value to those that want it, without spamming those that won't.

I've also had a couple members ask if there was a good place to post some film reviews. Since I also intend to write a few here and there, this seems like the ideal place. This is especially true since Meetup's own forums are barren wastelands, buried and neglected since the "newmeetup" revolution of earlier this year.

So if you're a member, or you live in Melbourne and like films, then please check it out. We've got a very busy month ahead thanks to the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) screening many excellent films, the Russian "Resurrection" Festival hosted by Palace Cinemas as well as some regular films and the Can't Stop the Serenity charity screening later in the month.

ThriftShelf

It's been a while since I posted, and I apologise to those people who do actually check this blog out now and then. Thanks to the ever excellent Google Analytics I know there's a few loyal souls out there.

One of the things that's been keeping me busy lately is my newest project, ThriftShelf. I buy a lot of books online and it occurred to me that there aren't too many options if you want to compare prices. Checking each website manually is tedious, especially since some will present prices in your currency, while some show prices in their home currency (e.g. US Dollars). Some show prices inclusive of delivery, while other are exclusive of delivery, and some don't show you how much delivery will cost (usually a significant proportion of the price) until you're ready to check out.

To me this is the kind of structured problem that just begs for automation because it's:

(a) a waste of time to check each website manually when shopping. The whole point of technology is to liberate human beings from boring, monotonous tasks like shopping around for prices; and

(b) it's a problem that's structurally ideal for a technological solution.

Okay, so how does it work?

A few simple steps:

0. Go to www.thriftshelf.com.

1. Enter a search term. For example, "harry potter".

2. Choose from a list of possible results. In our example, you'd get the different Harry Potter books, plus a collector's set, some books related to the Harry Potter universe, and some academic books comparing Harry Potter to Jesus (yes, you read that last bit right).

3. Pick the book you want. The site then fetches prices from several well-known online merchants (Amazon, Better World Books and Book Depository are in there), converts all prices to the same currency, calculates delivery cost (where necessary) and sorts the totals from cheapest to most expensive.

The currency and interface language used are chosen to best fit the country in which in the user is visiting from, and delivery prices are correctly calculated for their location. Currently, the UI is available in five languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese), and over twenty currencies are supported.

4. Finally, you then click the orange big button to be taken to the cheapest merchant's site. There's also the option to pick one of the other merchants in case you don't like the cheapest.

So when can you start using it?

The short answer is right away. The long answer is that the site is undergoing testing and there are still some tweaks needed and some SEO that needs to be done. The site launches officially by the end of the month.

Of course, like any website, it's never really done. Future plans include more merchants, games and films, and more features which will be revealed at a later date. Have fun!

Where have all the men gone?

This is an article I originally wrote for It's a Dude Thing last month. I'm reposting it here for those who follow my blog.

Being a bit of a geek, I’ve been a fan of anime for some time, especially the work of Studio Ghibli and it’s star director Hayao Miyazaki. What I usually enjoy about these films are the rich plots, adult characters and great animation. So, when I went along to see Princess Mononoke (literally “monster princess”) last week, I was giddy with anticipation for some great action and a story I could sink my teeth in to.

However, as the film progressed a definite theme set in. All the females were portrayed as intelligent, hardworking and strong. The men on the other hand were almost uniformly dull, lazy and cowardly. In fact, the only positive male character in the entire film was the protagonist, a boy who ultimately “conquers” by bringing the opposing forces of the narrative together in harmony.

All this (and it’s a long film) got me wondering – when did it become okay to portray men so negatively while promoting women (and feminine behaviour in men) as the solution? How did we arrive at a popular culture ideal of strong women and feminised men?

Now, you might be tempted to think that this is some kind of phenomenon restricted to Japanese animation (“it’s just Asian kids stuff anyway, right?”). But spare a thought for the endless American sitcoms featuring a clumsy husband/boyfriend paired with a the sassy, smart, go-getter wife/girlfriend. Here too, the only intelligent men seem to be either gay, geeky, gentle romeos or in some way anti-masculine archetypes.

A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with a chick I was chatting up female school teacher acquaintance who expressed a view on how “hard it is to grow up into an ethical person, if you’re unlucky enough to be male,” before going on to espouse some stock standard feminist viewpoints on men.

However, she had a point. An undeclared war on masculinity seems to be under way. A culture war that’s being fought out on our TV screens and in our schools and workplaces which puts out a subtle but constant message that somehow boys are bad and girls are good, and if only boys were nicer and more like girls than the world’s problems could be solved. This is a giant and destructive lie.

In his book No More Mr Nice Guy, American psychologist and family therapist Robert Glover talks about the growing emergence of what he calls the “Nice Guy syndrome.” Men who have been raised, directly or indirectly, to believe that it is not safe or acceptable to be just who they are. Loaded with toxic shame, these men morph into approval seeking machines, ultimately leading lives which are unfulfilled and self-limiting.

Glover defines a new type of man which he calls the integrated male, who embraces his masculinity and the creative and sexual energy which comes with it. He is neither a nice guy, nor it’s opposite extreme – the jerk – but instead is a man who acknowledges and loves who he is while embracing his masculinity. The book is selling well.

So where have all the men gone? In our post-industrial, information-era world, where boys are raised by women, educated by women and bombarded with messages to be more like women, where fathers are away at work all day and young men have no positive masculine role models to emulate, what kind of generation of men are we creating? And what kind of fathers will they be in turn?

I’m not advocating a return to some idealised 1950s Leave It Beaver never-never land because the repression of that era was very real. But as I suggested with the title I chose for this article, there is a growing identity crisis in masculinity, at least in the English speaking world.

Men are fracturing along the lines of popular media, as boys who never grow up or men who embrace violence or sport or drugs as a substitute for real manhood, or who drive themselves to work at the exclusion of social or personal lives, or who become nice guys forever trying to please everyone and actually pleasing no-one, least of all themselves. We need a new generation of great, male role models.