New online directory for charities, small businesses and individuals
Howard Lake | 15 October 2004 | News
Redcog.net is a new online service that says that it will help its target audience of charities and small businesses advertise themselves online at low cost, and where they won’t be drowned out by large corporations’ adverts and bigger advertising budgets.
Redcog.net’s founders Phil De Caux and Dean Deacon believe that there is a need for “a low-cost, effective advertising Web site that put its members first, where members could not buy their way up the listings and where large corporations were not allowed to advertise.”
Their advertising listing systems are meant to be fair and transparent. For example, search results will list organisations in a random order, so that the Aardvark charity won’t always come top.
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They are trying to build up an online community at the site with a discussion forum.
Since the site has no track record, it is getting going by offering free listings for six months. Thereafter the site’s owners will charge £25 a year.
The difficulty with any such site is building a brand and demonstrating its effectiveness. The simple online mall or listing directory approach for charities has been tried many times over the years, and is a very difficult model to crack, not least now that there are very low cost ways of targeted advertising such as Google’s AdWords.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.