Dec 06, 2006 Meeting at Schooner Restaurant

Hi, folks!

Those of you who didn't have a chance to be at the meeting were missed and missed a great discussion about the use of blog technology to shape our lead trading group. Myself of Transworld Systems Inc. (luiz.costa@transworldsystems.com) and Mauro (Rick) of Treadstone Mortgage (rick@treadstonemortgage.com) discussed my proposal of developing a weblog (blog) network of lead traders named after this blog, Just Trade Leads, where users in general will find cool material about sales and marketing, vendors, solution providers, and other related topics. The networkers would trade leads (off course!) among themselves, using their blogs ONLY as communication hubs.

I am proposing to develop and run the infrastructure that would primarely subsist out of advertisement revenue streams from ads placed on all Justs Trade Leads member organization blogs. Part of the revenue from each blog would suport that particular group. Rick and I discussed the use of some ad space to promote members business activities, which is a cool way of defraying the organization's cost, so we establish a very competitive membership fee structure. A low membership will be huge in attracting members all over the US, and who knows, in other countries.

I will continue to investigate the potential of Google Blogger as the underlying technology, along with my current search for our own blog infrastructure (our own server). If anybody has any idea in this regard, please, let me know. I'll keep you posted.

In the mean time, as members of the Just Trade Leads of Holland you are encouraged to contribute with your posts and consider that we might shape this blog to be accessible by the public. That is going to be essential for exposure to other regions and advertising revenue. So, If you want to trade a specific lead with another member(s), it is safer to do it through e-mail, until we think about something else, like a private forum to exchange hard leads among ourselves. Please, also use your networking abilities to invite more people to participate of our weekly meetings. If anybody knows of people in general who would be interested in writing cool things to be published here, let me know. Cartoons, stories, anything related to sales and marketing would be welcome, don't you folks think so?

Best regards,

Luiz Costa
Just Trade Leads