Moonfruit Lounge - Build a website

2,000,000th website competition winner!

Joe — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:10:00 +0000

Well, the results are in! We passed the 2,000,000 site mark on Jan 12th 2009, so it was a great start to the year. We then froze the competition at that point and looked back at all the sites that were created from the day the competition started (28 Nov 2008) to create our lucky list. And the winner is....

...wait for it...

....http://papercocktail.moonfruit.com/ !!!

Once we had our list of about 35,000 sites that qualified for entry we picked a random number and Paper Cocktail turned up. And what a great site it is. It's a new business starting out in the world of wedding stationery and we're very happy to be able to support new businesses especially in the current climate.

Paper Cocktail describes themselves as "a stationery specialist with a stunning collection of wedding stationery, that blends beautiful handmade papers with our contemporary design philosophy. We recognise the importance of the wedding invitation in terms of introducing the style of our clients wedding to their family and friends and we believe in creating a first impression that will last forever!". So you can see that this kind of designer eye lends itself well to Moonfruit's visual design tools.

When I wrote a note to Mary, the owner of the site, to tell her that she had won, it proved more difficult than I thought. If you've ever tried writing an email with "You've won £1000", you'll suddenly notice that it sounds a bit spammy (or is that scammy?) and a little suspect. So I had to fill it with "this is genuine", "I really am the MD of Moonfruit", "please give me a call if you want to", etc. Gratefully, Mary did believe me and was kind enough to tell us what she thought about Moonfruit.

"As a company Paper Cocktail has a strong design ethic and it was very important to us that our website mirrored our contemporary design philosophy while showcasing our collection in a user friendly manner. Having tried (and failed!) to build a website with a number of the other website builders and tools available online, we were delighted to discover SiteMaker. As we have no web publishing experience, we were pleasantly surprised at Site Maker’s ease of use, flexibility in terms of design options and the number of tools and widgets available. We believe that SiteMaker will allow us to develop an effective web presence at an exceptionally low cost, which again is advantageous to our growing organisation. We are still developing our website and we are looking forward to including a few more items from SiteMaker's “box of tricks” to further enhance our visitors web experience!"

Gosh, it made me blush.

So there you have it, www.papercocktail.moonfruit.com is the winner and we wish them every success in their new business venture!

And thanks to all of you who entered and helped us reach our 2m site goal. Onwards to 3,000,000!

Help us reach 2,000,000 websites, have a Xmas bonus

Joe — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:53:00 +0000

Who'd have thought it but we're rapidly approaching 2,000,000 websites built using SiteMaker. We are of course very proud of this achievement and it goes to show how many people have been touched by Moonfruit SiteMaker and how many customers have been able to create a website beyond their expectations using our award winning website builder. But enough about us, this is about you. You're the ones building the sites, so we wanted to give something back, like a Xmas bonus...

We've decided to run a competition in the run up to reaching 2,000,000 websites with a prize of £1000 cash (that's roughly $1,500 or €1,250 in your money!). We thought this might be helpful during these crunchy times to pay for or pay off your Xmas shopping (depending on when we pass the 2,000,000 site mark).

The rules are simple: anyone who builds a website on Moonfruit.com between 1 Dec 2008 and the day that we hit the magic 2,000,000 number will be entered into the prize draw. We've had roughly 1.97m websites built as of today, so that's roughly 30,000 people who will be in the draw. We will then select the winner randomly from this group of people once we hit 2,000,000 websites.

But hold your horses, not just any website will do, it has to be a 'real' website. So don't just start creating new trial sites and hope to hit that magic number. If we find a 'welcome to your website' site, you won't win it. By 'real' we mean a website that's actually being created for a specific purpose or is being used for something, and not just created in the hope of winning this competition. It must have real content and a real purpose. And you can't just duplicate an existing site many times over. We'll check!

So there you go. Now's the time to tell your friends to start building websites. Or build that site you've always wanted to build. Or both.

Good luck to you all and be careful you don't spend the money before you get it ;-)

Moonfruit Resellers - a case study

Joe — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:03:00 +0000

More and more people are making a living out of Moonfruit as professional web designers. Once people discover how easy it is to do, they realise that they can do it, not just for themselves, but for others also. And they can make money ;-). So we thought we'd give you a bit more information on what life is like as a Moonfruit Reseller.

Alistair at SDDesigns joined Moonfruit in June 2006 and has been designing sites ever since with clients in the UK, US and Portugal. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for us...

1. What is your business called and how did you get started?

I actually started web designing as a hobby, my first website was for a very good friend who became a client: www.councillorcreswell.co.uk. As time went on more and more people asked me to design for them, so I started my own small business.

SDDesigns originally started as scrappydoodesigns but as I progressed I realised the name, although catchy, was not really doing my profile any good and I rebranded.

SDDesigns now has clients in the UK, New York and Portugal. I design commercial and political websites, with the newest one being www.kenthouseinc.com

2. What was the challenge you faced in your business that led you to use Moonfruit SiteMaker?

My first ever websites was designed on Microsoft Front Page, but it wasn't flexible and I found myself getting frustrated as I knew how I wanted it to look but couldn't get it right. So I surfed the net and tried several products then came across a new product “Moonfruit”. It was so easy to use that I have used it ever since.

3. Why did you pick Moonfruit over other reseller options?

I picked moonfruit because the look was right, the features and the programming where already done for me. I liked the way I could instantly change something when a client was online, and if you got in trouble, help was only an email away.

4. How has Moonfruit allowed you to achieve your business goals?

Moonfruit has allowed me to achieve a better understanding of the internet, ease in my business and most of all allowed me to enjoy my job.

5. How successful has your business with Moonfruit been?

My business owes its success to Moonfruit, as it has allowed me to achieve the look that my clients require.

6. What advice would you have for someone thinking about setting up a Moonfruit Reseller business?

If you are thinking of setting up a reseller, just do it, you have nothing really to loose. Be honest with your clients at all times, say what you can do, and most of all enjoy doing it. If you don't enjoy designing then it will show.

So there you have it. You could be making a tidy living from Moonfruit. And some of you probably are ;-).

Reseller packs are different from our standard packs that you see on moonfruit.com as those packs are designed for personal and not commercial use. We tend to make the distinction that if you're receiving money to build a website you should really be using one of our Reseller packs. Reseller packs have higher disk and bandwidth limits, plus more free domain names. If you're interested in becoming a reseller, then please contact us. Other types of partnership are also available, see our partners page for details.