A movement to the side, perhaps to move ahead

As the summer progressed, it became clear that the current operations for Ayrstone weren't going to start making a living for me, and the opportunities we were seeing weren't looking like they'd "blow up" fast enough and large enough to deliver enough money to keep our household afloat.

Furthermore, while I'm still excited about the idea of a farm equipment review site, RateItAll, while intriguing, just doesn't seem to be robust enough to do what I had hoped (I did an experiment to rate precision ag sites). That leaves me with the option of building a ratings engine or using a pre-built one (like RedQueen), which is very time-consuming. Since I didn't have the time to consume, I decided to look for a paying gig.

Happily, about that time I was contacted by a recruiter from Cisco Systems, who was looking for some help in their Networking Academy. The Networking Academy is a fascinating group at Cisco: they create curricula in networking technology to help schools train students to get good jobs in networking, and they give it away, for free, and help the schools adopt it. It's self-serving, of course, but it actually does good for the schools and students - people learn critical skills to get a good job and move up the economic ladder.

This seems like a step sideways, but I don't see it that way. I think one of the most exciting opportunities coming up is networking the farm and getting more farm operations onto the web. This gives me a perfect seat to understand the technology and products available better.

So I'm excited, but I still want to build the review/rating site as I have a chance. Watch for more on that...

Progress and setbacks...

Ayrstone is up and, well, limping, if not running. The product is available, the store is online, payment processing is going fine, but the product just isn't selling as quickly as we had hoped.

The "big idea" was to try to reach farmers who aren't yet tied into the web to find information, and who may want independent advice and assessment instead of just swallowing what the GPS vendors say. So we decided to focus on direct mail, using lists from the major farm magazines - a sales rate of 1% would have gotten us to cash-neutral, and 2% would make us profitable.

After two mailings, we have a sales rate of significantly less than 1%. The majority of growers are out in the fields now, so there's no real point in trying to sell them now - they're not going to pay attention to anything.

It's disappointing, of course - the product itself is no great shakes in terms of production values, but it's a valuable resource in terms of information, and the "buyers only" website is excellent. Most of all, it's an attempt to start a business based on honesty and openness - the information, our approach, and the product itself is portrayed honestly, the subject we discuss is approached in the most objective way possible, and we are completely independent of the various GPS vendors we discuss. Given how important it is to most growers to get an independent view and not trust what the salespeople tell them, one would think they'd be crowding in to get what we have. But they're not.

In the meantime, I'm using Google AdWords to bring traffic to Ayrstone.com and looking at other revenue sources. I went to a Meetup last night and met the founder of Rateitall.com. I think they have an interesting site that may be useful for some ideas I have. Check out their widget on this blog.