North-West 'Online business' potential ?..

Paddy20

For some time, the potential for new online business's idea's which would create long term sustainable lucrative employment has been of interest to me.

If you have tried to set up an online business based in the N.W. and had some success, or failed.

Your personal experience could prove of interest, in relation to the true potential of the WWW as a job creating tool for the N.W. Community.

Please post your views on the positives or negative obstacles you may have encountered, or do we not have the support infrastrusture in place which might help you achieve your online business objectives ?..

P. :cool:

smashey

Good man Paddy. You got me thinking here. My initial thought was a bit negative. Broadband coverage in this country is a joke.

jimmycrackcorm

Is it just me or is anyone else thinking www.DonegalPorn.Com?

Paddy20

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

Is it just me or is anyone else thinking www.DonegalPorn.Com?

No page appear's .

P. :cool:

icom

Paddy20 wrote:

No page appear's .

P. :cool:

What a pity !!:)

ednwireland

iwouldn't worry about the online aspect of your business a good business relies on fast delivery, good customer service and happy customers coming back to your site. the only downside for online business here is a complete lack of decent bandwidth. but offshore hosting in uk or states can overcome some of this.
but the basis of a good business is the same so i'd focus on the idea.
mind you wasn't there a cmpany up in crolly or somewhere that were selling crafts online they had to close because the couriers cant/wont guarantee delivery times from donegal.

jimmycrackcorm

Paddy20 wrote:

No page appear's .

P. :cool:

Now we know why you have been so quiet posting here recently:D Well you asked for online opportunities - what could be easier than getting out a webcam and pointing at a naked Donegal spud.

Paddy20

I heard today that some company is laying fibre-optic cables throughout the Twin-Towns?.. anyone know anymore.

As if it is someone like NTL then that would mean householders being able to have , Telephone, Broadband and Digital T.V channels directly fed into there homes, which would be great.?..

P. :cool:

donegalman1

Thats the co council initiative same a sLetterkennys broadband that I don't think anyone bar pramerica or some company use.

icom

Paddy20 wrote:

I heard today that some company is laying fibre-optic cables throughout the Twin-Towns?.. anyone know anymore.

As if it is someone like NTL then that would mean householders being able to have , Telephone, Broadband and Digital T.V channels directly fed into there homes, which would be great.?..

P. :cool:

All the information on the project is here Paddy:

http://www.donegalcoco.ie/council/it/Donegal+Regional+Broadband+Network/default.htm

Paddy20

icom wrote:

All the information on the project is here Paddy:

http://www.donegalcoco.ie/council/it/Donegal+Regional+Broadband+Network

/default.htm

icom,



Many thanks for the link. I will study it with much interest .

P. :cool:

Paddy20

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

Now we know why you have been so quiet posting here recently:D Well you asked for online opportunities - what could be easier than getting out a webcam and pointing at a naked Donegal spud.

I understand your post was in jest, but I do not understand it. Could you please clarify it for a simple Twin-Towns twit like me ?.., and nice to note you missed me while I was away for a week .

P. :cool:

Carrickman

God help ye if it is NTL:eek: Have had major problems up here in Dublin with them and I'm not the only one.

Gareth Austin

Hi Paddy

We use the web to reach customers who may not be able to or live within our catchment area. Our website receives a good amount of hits and works both as a stand-alone shop and as a compliment to our florist and garden centre allowing customer to see items before they order or to get an idea of the type or products we do.

In Newtown we are in a broad band area which I belive is a must for on-line retailer and we are located beside Duffys transport which means we tick the major boxes for fast dispatch etc. (We were 3 years searching for a good site before we settled on Newtown so this wasn;t all by coincidence).

There are many businesses in our area who have web-sites and never do anythign with them or have very bad websites which work to the detrement of their business.

We are the first garden centre in Ireland to have an on-line shop. I know it won;t work on all our products because part of the attraction of visiting a garden centre is the smell, touch sensation which is hard to replecate on-line. But we can but try.....

Paddy20

Gareth,

An online link to your 'Onlineshop' website, or it's web address would be of interest to me, and others.

Thanks.

P :cool:

Gareth Austin wrote:

Hi Paddy

We use the web to reach customers who may not be able to or live within our catchment area. Our website receives a good amount of hits and works both as a stand-alone shop and as a compliment to our florist and garden centre allowing customer to see items before they order or to get an idea of the type or products we do.

In Newtown we are in a broad band area which I belive is a must for on-line retailer and we are located beside Duffys transport which means we tick the major boxes for fast dispatch etc. (We were 3 years searching for a good site before we settled on Newtown so this wasn;t all by coincidence).

There are many businesses in our area who have web-sites and never do anythign with them or have very bad websites which work to the detrement of their business.

We are the first garden centre in Ireland to have an on-line shop. I know it won;t work on all our products because part of the attraction of visiting a garden centre is the smell, touch sensation which is hard to replecate on-line. But we can but try.....

muffler

Paddy20 wrote:

Gareth,

An online link to your 'Onlineshop' website, or it's web address would be of interest to me, and others.

Thanks.

P :cool:

It would be in Gareth Austins interest not to post up links advertising his own business. This matter has been dealt with in the past and Gareth will know what I am saying.

If he wants to PM a link that will be fine or alternatively it can be googled by anyone who is interested

Paddy20

muffler wrote:

It would be in Gareth Austins interest not to post up links advertising his own business. This matter has been dealt with in the past and Gareth will know what I am saying.

If he wants to PM a link that will be fine or alternatively it can be googled by anyone who is interested

I was not aware that there was a history of some kind here He is very welcome to send me a PM.

P. :cool:

nanook

paddy, the policey has always been, if you want to advertise on boards.ie then you have to pay for it.

People make mistakes and in the past it was let go but nowadays if you are spamming a business then you could get banned for life.

Paddy this is not aimed at you but just updating the people

b0bsquish

Ive been involved in a few things in the past, none of which have really worked but then again they were never any really advertising in it so ya cant expect people to just magically find the site and give me money! althou more plans are in the pipeline, theres deffo a large "untapped" userbase in the nw, but then again theres still a good percentage of the people who cant get broadband, me being one of them up until very recently!

Gareth Austin

I woudl agree that poor broadband coverage in the North West is prohibitive to many people who wish to use the Internet for shopping etc. Where many signs are built using Flash this makes it a very slow process to download pics etc.

Maby with the on-goign increases in Broadband throughout the COunty this may encourage more people to go on-line.

I wonder if a major on-line retailer such as Amazon, Ryanair or Tesco release figures for customers using their on-liner services in regional areas?

What % of homes in Donegal have broadband?

jimmycrackcorm

Apart from the fact that BB needs to be universally available, a critical factor in its practical use is actually upload bandwidth. i.e. I could easily do my job in Donegal as in Dublin if I had the upload capacity to manage large file transfer up and support video calling / shared computer access. This would effectively allow no differentiation between whether I am physically at my desk or someone can see exactly what I am doing both visually and what I am working on screen.

Despite the fact that teleworking is feasible through current broadband technologies, there is a huge disparity in its implementation beause of the gap in teleworking and a virtual remote presence.

Perhaps even Donegal Coco. and or the IDA should be looking at the idea of supporting / providing remote teleworking centres attached to the fibre MANs and the ESB fibre network which would allow this type of high capacity.

Paddy20

Great post Jimmycc,

Lets hope someone with real influence takes note

P. :cool:

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

Apart from the fact that BB needs to be universally available, a critical factor in its practical use is actually upload bandwidth. i.e. I could easily do my job in Donegal as in Dublin if I had the upload capacity to manage large file transfer up and support video calling / shared computer access. This would effectively allow no differentiation between whether I am physically at my desk or someone can see exactly what I am doing both visually and what I am working on screen.

Despite the fact that teleworking is feasible through current broadband technologies, there is a huge disparity in its implementation beause of the gap in teleworking and a virtual remote presence.

Perhaps even Donegal Coco. and or the IDA should be looking at the idea of supporting / providing remote teleworking centres attached to the fibre MANs and the ESB fibre network which would allow this type of high capacity.

Paddy20

Could the the North West using it's best business and social minds not become the creator of a completely new method of overcoming our unemployment problem's, without waiting for outside interests to intervene.

I have some idea's, both social and business.

However, I would like to hear from others who agree with me, without disclosing their plans at this juncture.

All comments are welcome, and please note that our current lack of broadband IS NOT a major hindrance .

P. :cool:

nanook

was there not a simillar thread to this a couple of months ago.

and paddy in relation to lack of broadband not being a hindrance, I would hav e to say that if you want to set up a Internet Business Hub then you have to have good connections from what ever source, DSL, Satalite etc.

Goodshape

I'd love to see it happen but a lack of broadband is certainly an issue.

muffler

nanook wrote:

was there not a simillar thread to this a couple of months ago.QUOTE]


Good spot nanook. There was a very similar thread and when that happens (and I think there was a song recently with the same title ) two become one.

Merged

nanook

cheers muffler, thought i was going senile but glad to see the ol grey matter still works.
Shame i was to lazy to look for it though

Paddy20

nanook wrote:

cheers muffler, thought i was going senile but glad to see the ol grey matter still works.
Shame i was to lazy to look for it though

Yes, must agree that I had completely forgotten that I had started a similar thread . Therefore guilty as charged.

P. :cool: