Part 1: Happeneurs, site tips and unlimited traffic

Tell us how you came to win the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award?
Back in '96 I started a mail order and Internet business with 10 pounds (selling products made from seaweed) and in two years built up a database of 240,000 in 13 countries, won the SHELL LiVEWIRE Scottish & UK businessman of the year award, the Royal Bank of Scotland Businessman of the Year and The Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust Businessman of the year award. (Phew!)

What inspired you to launch HitsnClicks and what is the main goal of the site?
After I sold my mail order business, I helped set up Ezyfind.com in the UK, a global directory and website publishing company. It went from zero to 153 staff in 18 months, and burned more than $3 million, then went belly up.

During this time, I recognized there were three issues constantly needing addressing - traffic, value and revenue, hence the birth of HitsnClicks. HitsnClicks is an online resource dedicated to small- to medium-sized businesses and netpreneuers (or happeneurs), to helping drive traffic, value and revenue to their site using our vast array of content.

Who are your subscribers and can you tell us what is a h@ppeneur(TM) ?
" h@ppeneur n. a net based business man or woman of positive disposition who attempts to make profit from the Internet by risk, initiative and guidance from hitsnclicks.com"

Our members (or happeneurs) represent a complete cross-section of the Internet, from small sole Props (one man bands) to marketing directors, marketing managers of medium to large size companies. It has been very surprising to see the appeal we have completely across the board.

How did you make the decision to make the site fee-based and what do you offer subscribers?
Value. We wanted our happeneurs to appreciate the value they were receiving, and the time, effort and commitment of the three of us working with a team of 240 content contributors for the last 18 months - planning, sourcing, editing, categorizing, reviewing, testing, writing the content and placing it under one roof for members.

We also offer members discounts on our other services (and products) thus providing them with incentives to join. There was also the essential ingredient - revenue - as we did not want to be an advertising based revenue model. In both the USA and UK now, many free services providers have fallen by the wayside.

You provide a lot of good content about website design for your users. What elements make a good and successful website?
Crisp clean navigation, a good URL or domain name, mechanisms built into the site or landing pages for catching email addresses to follow up, good relevant freshly updated sticky content. And the ability to explain what you do in the first five seconds of hitting the homepage.

Briefly, what are the seven secrets to unlimited traffic as cited on your website?
Reciprocal linking. Good Referral and email capture mechanisms. Search engine registration and optimization. An affiliate program. Syndicate your content. Share everything: ideas, content, links, lists etc. The Net is a collaborative medium.

What is the single most important aspect to improving content on a site?
Find out what visitors want, and give it to them DAILY. Keep the content fresh, and keep updating it all the time.

Your site also guarantees search placement. How does your guarantee differ from what your competitors offer?
Our members not only get the search engine placement, but also access to our entire resource; they get the education and the knowledge as to why and how to improve their placement, and we "prepare them" for the service with some of the tips in our happenetics course and Powerpoints. We also guarantee if they don't get a top ten placement for three consecutive months, they get the next three months free.

Continued...