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Vodafone Ireland have announced today that the iPhone and iPhone 3GS will be available from March 25th 2010.

What is semi-interesting is that Vodafone are pitching the device at their full range of clients ie. both pre-paid and monthly and also business users.

They're also going to be offering "tethering" which allows you to use your iPhone as a modem.

Though "tethering" is a "special" feature on the iPhone it's standard on most "smart" phones, such as the Nokia N95, for example.

The pricing seems to be quite competitive, but how well that will integrate with existing contracts is not at all clear. In our case, for example, we have about 15 handsets with Vodafone. I don't see why I'd want to pay a premium just for an iPhone - which I already have, as I bought an unlocked one from Expansys.

Trying to make sense of the pricing options on the Vodafone site would give you grey hair!

The price of the actual handsets (same model) vary from FREE to around €99 for the 8 Gb 3G, while the 32 GB 3GS can cost up to €300.

It's also not clear if the handsets will be 100% locked to Vodafone's network, which would render the incompatible with Maxroam and other services when travelling overseas.

Of course Vodafone already asked us all to sign up to be informed about the iPhone months ago, but have been silent ever since.

What kind of demand will they get?

Will they have enough hardware to handle it?

Will people be switching from rival carriers?

I vowed to myself earlier this year that I'd do my best to get websites up and running on as many of the domains that I own as possible.

So without further ado I give you freelancejobs.ie - with thanks to James in Forbairt Media for his design skills.

The site's purpose is pretty obvious, so I don't think it needs much explanation. If, however, people feel that more categories are needed (or maybe fewer is better?) do let me know.

I get contacted by companies trying to sell me products and services on a regular basis.

Sometimes the "fit" is really wrong - we don't buy or sell furniture, so trying to sell us wholesale lots of armchairs isn't going to work too well.

Of course a lot of it is down to technique.

If you can build up a rapport with a client then it's going to be a hell of a lot easier to sell them goods and services.

Of course if you manage to completely alienate the client they're not going to want to buy from you and may even take out a barring order.

A couple of years ago we were approached by a software vendor that was selling a content management system. Basically it was a tool for building websites easily. It wasn't free and it wasn't cheap. It didn't integrate easily with our existing software at the time, so it just wasn't of any interest to us. So we politely declined the "offer". You'd think that would be the end of the story, or that it is a total "non-story", but 24 hours later the sales person was in touch with us again saying that he wanted to "speak to someone else" as I obviously "lacked vision".

Brilliant!

So this "genius" not only lost the sale, but has managed to put himself in the position where I would not do any business with them ever again.

Or how about the sales guy from a particular glossy magazine...

First off he gave us a media pack with totally unrealistic sales projections. Unrealistic in that you'd practically have to clone readers in test tubes to get that kind of readership. We told him that we weren't interested and that we didn't think the content was particularly good (it was always about 2 months behind the UK publications in the same vertical).  Since it was pretty obvious that we weren't going to buy ads from him anytime soon you'd have thought that he'd have moved on .. but no, he kept on ringing and ringing and ringing..

Another thing is to actually do a small bit of research before you pick up the phone.

There's little point in trying to acquire a client that you've already got (upselling to them is a totally different matter)

More than once I've had over-zealous, but rather silly, sales people trying to sell me things I'm already buying.

Google Adwords - we've been using them for years. Yet the first time we got a phone call from Google it was from one of their sales people asking us if we'd be interested in buying any. I think we were paying about 1000 euro / month at the time to Google, so they didn't make any extra sales!

Or the sales guy from a vendor we've been dealing with for about 8 years:
"I believe you might sell domains and hosting" - have you even visited our website?
"I think you've done some business with us in the past" - not really - we just enjoy giving you about 5k a month cos we're really nice that way!

Of course some sales people have a "script". While that script might be useful to a point, it shouldn't get in the way.
A couple of months ago we got a call from a company in the UK that wanted to sell us advertising on TV. Of course they didn't say that - what they said was that they could get us onto the TV - which was a good way to stimulate our interest.
So I pick up the phone - around this time you normally would expect the usual introductions and exchange of pleasantries. Instead I was treated to about 5 minutes of machine gun "spiel" from some girl who wouldn't let me get a word in edgeways!
Now we may not have been interested in buying the ads, but I was curious as to how it worked and how much it cost etc., - but I don't think I even managed to ask those key questions.

Some sales tactics are plain annoying, but others are just so incredibly dumb that they leave you speechless.. and then people wonder why it's hard to get a decision maker on the phone!

July / August are odd months ..

While for many they are associated with holiday and relaxation, for me they're the ramp up to the autumn season, so they're actually busier than other times of the year in many respects.

Over the last few weeks and those to come I've been working on a number of projects that will hopefully bear fruit in the next few weeks and months ..

One that has finally "gone live" is a new blog - New TLD Guide, which has been setup to help people come to grips with the new domain extensions... Hopefully people will engage with us and we'll all be able to learn something new.

I've also been working on more screencasts for the Blacknight video channel, but have been having massive issues with audio - it's probably something simple, but I haven't found a solution as yet ...

And then there's the biggest distraction of them all - my new Xbox 360 (thanks Microsoft!). I've become quite addicted to Call of Duty 4 ! (more on that at a later stage..)

I've also become quite addicted to Lee Child - I picked up one novel when I was down in Cork recently and have become totally hooked!

Whether there's an "economic downturn" or not you'll always find people who simply don't "get" the concept of paying for stuff.

I mentioned this issue on Twitter earlier today and a couple of people sent me links to these absolutely hilarious videos. Apologies if the display is a bit odd - width may be a problem:



Of course if someone owes you money they really need to pay you .. Stewie's take on this is .. well .. em .. violent?



And the followup ...

Today was a reasonably productive day...

No day is every really as productive as I'd like it to be, but today was pretty good!

To start with I finally had a few quiet minutes to myself and was able to book my flights to Sydney for the ICANN meeting. I had tried to book it online, but I couldn't make sense of the times / dates ie. if you leave Dublin on Friday, which day would you arrive in Sydney. Solution was to just ring Trailfinders and let them worry about it. They also gave me a better rate on the ticket than I'd found online, so it was a "win win" situation. Now all I have to do is either persuade the Hilton to give me a better rate or else find a different hotel....

The other bit of progress today was that we finally launched Windows 2008 with IIS7 on our shared hosting platform. We're giving the first 100 signups for a Windows 2008 Minimus plan a massive 20 euro off, so you can get your site hosted on the latest Microsoft server platform for a mere 29.95 for the first year!! (More details here)

Now if only I could work my way through the rest of my todo list...

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If you want to run your own business then you need to work at it.

You cannot expect your business to run itself.

You cannot expect to work "normal" hours.

You cannot expect to work a "normal" working week

If you can't deal with any of the above then simply give up now.

Sure, everyone needs to strike the balance between work and their private life

However, if you're running your own business you need to realise that you cannot think like an employee (conversely your employees won't think like you do either, but that's another discussion)

I'm overjoyed about this one ...

Full details over on the company blog

When you run your own business you can end up becoming heavily invested in your business' success and failure. Comments and feedback, both positive and negative, might affect you more than you would like to admit.

Over the last few years the company I founded has grown from operating out of a bedroom (or two) to having a fulltime staff of close to 20.

Over the years we've improved some things, made a total mess of others, delighted some people and really annoyed others. (In many instances the "love" and "hate" is directed at me personally, as I am the most visible person associated with the company).

The harsh reality is that no matter what you do you cannot and will not please everyone all of the time.

Since I'm interested in my industry I track certain keywords on Twitter, so watching people talking about some of our competitors can be very enlightening.
 GoDaddy, which is simply massive in terms of its customer base, proves my point.
Just watch how people react to them over a 24 hour period.
You will see both ends of the scale.
They're all talking about the same company during the same time period, so it's really fascinating (to me at least) to watch.