Floppy McNuts

Xyun · Post by **Xyun** » July 8, 2006, 11:11 am

I've been working on a website for over 5 months now and I think I'm finally at a point where I can launch it. So, this post is two-fold. It is part advisement and part advertisement. Shameless advertising, you say? All advertising is shameless is my reply.

Just some background info on the site. It is basically a retail store for poker apparel. The idea had been lingering in my head for a couple of years. A recent and very drastic change in my financial situation motivated me to exert the time and effort. The entire project so far has cost me about $1000, which was actually invested by a silent partner. So now I think I'm ready for launch.

However, before I can even think about beginning more sophisticated and expensive forms of advertising, I am in a position where I have to start with word of mouth. This is where I could use some help from VV in two ways.

The first is that if you know someone that enjoys poker or plays regularly please direct them to my sight. I think they would be interested to at least see what I have to offer. Just email them a link when you get a chance if it's not too much to ask.

Secondly, I need some feedback on my site. I really suck at the interweb. Even though I'm an amateur I think I did a pretty good job. I do have an issue of having two different check out systems depending on the product you buy. However, one of the manufacturers simply gives you the software to incorporate into your site, and the other manufacturer is a guy in my town who stitches hats in his giant garage. Is this a big enough problem for me to delay the launching of the site until it is fixed? Should I even mention the discrepancy on the site? Do you think I have too many advertisements? Are my designs too dull? Are the prices too low, reasonable, too high?

I just want some advice/criticism about the site as it stands and a little bit of word of mouth action from my homies. Feel free to browse around and give me any positive or negative feedback.

And also, feel free to buy something!!

http://www.floppymcnuts.com/

Thank you guys very much in advance!

Kilmoll the Sexy · Post by **Kilmoll the Sexy** » July 8, 2006, 11:28 am

Not sure if it would keep me from launching, but I would rectify the checkout as soon as you can....

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 8, 2006, 5:18 pm

A front page with five separate flashing animated offsite advertisement gifs makes my nervous huge! (if I was looking for legit sites to buy things).

I'd recommend pirating Dreamweaver and then pirating a few video tutorials off the newsgroups like:

Lydia Dreamweaver 8 - Essential Training
Lydia Dreamweaver 8 - Beyond the Basics
Total Training - Extreme Web Design

Video/Interactive tutorials like those are the fastest and easiest way to get familiar with the UI and basic web design so you can get a professional looking site up IMO.

To get rid of those ugly ads on your site, just spring for the $7.77/month for a POWWEB hosted site. 20GB/400GB fast and fully featured:

http://www.powweb.com/powweb/hosting.bml

This picture could probably be redone with a nicer looking hanger!

Good luck with the site! Ever make those custom poker chips?

sarlen · Post by **sarlen** » July 8, 2006, 8:16 pm

Winnow wrote:A front page with five separate flashing animated offsite advertisement gifs makes my nervous huge! (if I was looking for legit sites to buy things).

I'd recommend pirating Dreamweaver and then pirating a few video tutorials off the newsgroups like:

Lydia Dreamweaver 8 - Essential Training
Lydia Dreamweaver 8 - Beyond the Basics
Total Training - Extreme Web Design

Video/Interactive tutorials like those are the fastest and easiest way to get familiar with the UI and basic web design so you can get a professional looking site up IMO.

To get rid of those ugly ads on your site, just spring for the $7.77/month for a POWWEB hosted site. 20GB/400GB fast and fully featured:

http://www.powweb.com/powweb/hosting.bml

This picture could probably be redone with a nicer looking hanger!

Good luck with the site! Ever make those custom poker chips?

Well you asked for some objective opinions so here goes..

Sound advise Winnow. Some handy work in Photoshop to clear up a bit of the fuzzyness of your pics wouldnt hurt eather. At 1280x1024 they seem a bit fuzzy to me. Shoot for the Macromedia studio MX or better for authoring tools, you can make some wicked graphics with a so so learning curve, and easy to find a copy out on the net.

You have some nice products, do them justice and show case the items your selling and not the corner of a door and the side of a desk. Make a plain color back drop that makes the item stand out, seeing the door and the desk make it seem thrown together. I wouldnt feel confident buying a shirt pictured on a wire hanger on a door. On a solid color back ground with the hanger photoshopped out now were talkin.

For the menu across the top and for the links try getting some nice graphics and not just the arial font. Or even a cool Flash menu for them. Most of the time you can jack someone elses menus and just change what they say on them with a bit of work in Macromedia Studio.

MacroMedia has a learning curve but its not as bad as one would think. The good tutorials on the net and a news group or two will have you cranking out high end stuff in 2 to 3 weeks.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » July 8, 2006, 9:01 pm

You might also be able to pick up a couple used mannequin torsos, a male and female, to help "model" the clothing unless you want to actually use shots of people.

iandaina · Post by **iandaina** » July 8, 2006, 9:04 pm

The menu at the top of the Lucky hand page aren't working, other than that I don't have anything to add to what they've said.

Xyun · Post by **Xyun** » July 9, 2006, 1:03 am

Winnow wrote:A front page with five separate flashing animated offsite advertisement gifs makes my nervous huge! (if I was looking for legit sites to buy things).

I'd recommend pirating Dreamweaver and then pirating a few video tutorials off the newsgroups like:

Lydia Dreamweaver 8 - Essential Training
Lydia Dreamweaver 8 - Beyond the Basics
Total Training - Extreme Web Design

Video/Interactive tutorials like those are the fastest and easiest way to get familiar with the UI and basic web design so you can get a professional looking site up IMO.

To get rid of those ugly ads on your site, just spring for the $7.77/month for a POWWEB hosted site. 20GB/400GB fast and fully featured:

http://www.powweb.com/powweb/hosting.bml

This picture could probably be redone with a nicer looking hanger!

Good luck with the site! Ever make those custom poker chips?

I know those pics are sub par. My problem is I don't have a digital camera and had to borrow one to take those. I will do a little photoshopping on them tonite. I was planning on not carrying those types of shirts any more after this first batch is sold so that I could take those off my site completely.

I am already paying to have the site hosted. Those advertisements from poker sites are there because well, they pay per account. I was following what I see from any site having anything to do with poker. Namely, I haven't seen a poker site without tons of advertisements. I think mine are on par with the poker industry which itself is probably more excessive than other types of sites. I'm hard pressed to take them down considering how much they potentially will pay.

I've tried dreamweaver 8 and to be honest I did not like it as much as the one I'm using, yahoo sitebuilder. The yahoo one is more for the laymen, and very easy to follow. Over the last 6 months I've been on a huge learning curve already. I did learn a lot when I used dreamweaver, like about the CSS and so forth. But I was more interested in making the site functional than learning programming. I figure I can make improvements constantly along the way as long as it is up and (hopefully) making money.

As far as those poker chips I ended up not getting them. Once Oklahoma legalized poker I had to find another means of income anyway. Those bastards. I had such a great life.

lol.

Anyway, I hope to dramatically improve my site within the next few days. Thanks for the criticism, I plan on scaling the ads down a bit, improving the pics by putting them on a white background and focusing them a bit. I will also make the menu bar more aesthetically pleasing.

Any opinions on pricing?

sarlen · Post by **sarlen** » July 9, 2006, 1:43 am

Xyun wrote: Any opinions on pricing?

Pricing looks on par with other similar products from what I saw. Shipping is average priced for USA anyway, no idea on the out of country prices.

sarlen · Post by **sarlen** » July 9, 2006, 1:56 am

I've tried dreamweaver 8 and to be honest I did not like it as much as the one I'm using, yahoo sitebuilder. The yahoo one is more for the laymen, and very easy to follow. Over the last 6 months I've been on a huge learning curve already. I did learn a lot when I used dreamweaver, like about the CSS and so forth. But I was more interested in making the site functional than learning programming. I figure I can make improvements constantly along the way as long as it is up and (hopefully) making money.

Instead of making it all from scratch your self you can buy shopping cart enabled templates for Dreamweaver like these http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/dream ... mmerce.asp

The upside is all most all of the work is done already you just plug in your prices and products more or less but the down side is it requires specific things from the hosting company that some places wont have available with out buying their more expensive packages.

Over all I think you have a good start on it and I'm sure you will be sucessful

Neost · Post by **Neost** » July 9, 2006, 10:11 am

You might also be able to pick up a couple used mannequin torsos, a male and female, to help "model" the clothing unless you want to actually use shots of people.

sacrilege! you must use live female models with big breastes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tegellan · Post by **Tegellan** » July 9, 2006, 10:54 am

You ship to Europe? =P

Xyun · Post by **Xyun** » July 9, 2006, 12:42 pm

Yes! I should put that on there, that I will ship anywhere in the US or Europe.

Also, please take another look at the site. I cleaned it up a lot. I also cleaned up those pics that I have quite a bit. One of them still looks ghetto but wtf. I'm going to keep improving it and putting more designs up in the couple of weeks.

Still need feedback. Thanks!

http://www.FloppyMcNuts.com

Spang · Post by **Spang** » July 9, 2006, 4:41 pm

i enjoyed the blog

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 9, 2006, 5:33 pm

sarlen wrote: Instead of making it all from scratch your self you can buy shopping cart enabled templates for Dreamweaver like these http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/dream ... mmerce.asp

The upside is all most all of the work is done already you just plug in your prices and products more or less but the down side is it requires specific things from the hosting company that some places wont have available with out buying their more expensive packages.

7.77/month will get you what you need (PHP4/5, MySQL, etc) to run those unless you're transferring more then 13GB/day which is doubtful unless you're hosting pirated full DVDs in the background! My guess is that VeeshanVault rarely goes over 13GB/day or at all (unless people are file sharing in the background). Maybe Py will list what the daily bandwidth was for VV over the past month or something to get an idea.

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » July 9, 2006, 8:28 pm

After 1400 posts over many years a spam now and again is not a spam.

I second many of the suggestions, but would recommend sticking to clear over color, basic in appearance over gaudy and keep the laod times as fast as is possible.

Morgrym · Post by **Morgrym** » July 9, 2006, 9:07 pm

Looks pretty cool, hope your sales go well.

I did not see the option to enter the VV code so I did not buy anything

Xyun · Post by **Xyun** » July 10, 2006, 10:33 am

Neost wrote:
You might also be able to pick up a couple used mannequin torsos, a male and female, to help "model" the clothing unless you want to actually use shots of people.
sacrilege! you must use live female models with big breastes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Agreed! I'm actually going to get a couple of hot girls to wear the stuff and make ads for me. The problem is that even if I had the pics now I wouldn't really be able to advertise with them since I don't have the money. I figure hopefully by the end of this year I can make enough to put an add somewhere. I've been looking and it seems the cheapest print (magazine) add I could get would be cardplayer magazine. $2800 for a quarter page add. Billiards magazines are a little cheaper but don't have as much to do with cards.

As far as online advertising, I've only looked into other poker sites, like the ones listed on my site. I sent a profile of my site to http://www.pokerlistings.com so they can link my site. But I think even they will require some space for their link on my website.

In reality, I'm pretty new at this shit. I could use any advice or other ideas on how I can increase traffic and exposure for my site. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

miir · Post by **miir** » July 10, 2006, 12:48 pm

Well at least you didn't post this in the sports forum.

The sites design is uninspired.
Your selling unremarkable products for a fad market.
A google search for poker shirts and "poker shirts" came up with 8.6 million and 158k repsectively.

Good luck with it. I think you're going to need it.

*~*stragi*~* · Post by ***~*stragi*~*** » July 10, 2006, 2:48 pm

if you would like you can have a banner on my highly trafficed webpage
there is a picture of a duck and a duck kite on there but we can put your ad at the top

Xyun · Post by **Xyun** » July 10, 2006, 6:22 pm

link?