OwnTheMap.com - selling the world

That's a cool idea. I'm not sure what to think about these sort of advertising campaigns so I won't coment on that.

The overall design needs a lot of work. For the ads to show better you should use a flat style map, and definitely lose the glow around it. It would be cool if people could buy the ocean The oceans should also be some shade of blue or just white. That greenish grey looks very drab.

The header and navigation area needs some work too. Lose all those globes. They're just tacky looking. Put a map in the logo instead of the globe and use a more interesting font. You want something with a little bit of movement to it, so it inspires a feeling of excitement.

Then do something fun with the three steps above there. Maybe put them in curved boxes with colourful backgrounds. Overall the colour scheme needs improvement here. It's tough, because you're going to have a lot of colours on the map there.

A neat idea - good luck with it!

Hi had a look at the site my first thoughts were would it be possible to split the oceans of the world using a much darker colour ( or maybe a negative ) so as not to intefere with the country perimeters, as you are limitting yourself as most of the globe is underwater.
Looks a good layout.

I own a site which I am having problems with as I wanted to optomise my pages title tags and have found out as the site was done with smarty templates the site can only have a generic title tag throughout, don't know if anyone knows a way round this ?
My site is written in PHP linked to a SQL database using oscommerce as the shopping cart.
Any reviews or criticism would be welcome.
Thankyou
Martin
Jokingaround Fancy Dress

Hey,

I like the idea.

Small point here... People say design for 800x600 but I reckon its really 1024x768. Its a shame the world image doesnt fit on that res.

I want canada.

-h

Hello,
Idea looks very cool to me. But design, color selection and resolution choice require a lot of work. I don't like to scroll from left to right to see the whole screen. May be it's just personal preferences. And your affiliate links should be seen from the beginning. Color selection reminds very old style, with limited color choice.

Hi there,

I disagree with other posts re the design - I like it's brashness, and lets be fair - the million dollar page was hardly beautiful The page will eventually build its own visual identity what with new additions etc.

Looks good at 1280x1024, I have to be honest and say I hate the whole idea but looking at your finished ebay auctions you're a couple of hundred quid better off (so far) and I'm not so I guess that makes my opinion there pretty irrelevant

Hey,

Some of you may remember me mentioning OwnTheMap.com before. It is an advance on the pixel idea by Alex Tew which seems to be working (well... it's making me some money, which is what it's about right? And benefiting advertisers too... )

After being featured in the press, I figured it was time to jazz up the site a bit so I've added a flash version of the map and wanted to know your thoughts. Approved?

Daniel
ownthemap.com

Very neat concept. Looks like a lot of work went into it.
I disagree with color criticisms (unless updates have been made since those posts?)
If you're going to have a screen where you let people put any image they want on there, you are going to have a hard time having any kind of color co-ordination anyways. Midas well give it a unique feel!

I think this is a cool idea as well. Do the links to the owners of the countries get picked up by spiders since this is flash? I would assume not. That was one of the best things about Alex's site. Good luck!

Couple of ideas or suggestions that you may find useful:

1. I found it confusing that prices were listed in USD but the footnote states that countries are sold in GBP. Why not try listing in the currency that will be used for exchange and then supply a currency converter tool or link to an existing converter like XE (toolhttp://www.xe.com/ucc/ ) By using a single currency to list and sell you will also allow a greater degree of accuracy.

2. Could the attractiveness of this scheme be increased if by securing a country you enable the winner to not only advertise on that countries space, but they also gain access to a regional map where sub auctions can be held to sell, for example, counties in the UK. This will allow some of your peers to subsidise their own drinking (I mean study) as well - and you can take a skim off the top of any auciton fees generated.

3. On the countries page - the yellow link text on a blue background is hard to read.

4. The overall image could perhaps be improved by spending a little extra time on the page header so that the graphics look less like clip art. Try losing the shadow on the text as well - I think it will have more impact without than with, but I just have a rather conservative view of such things and dont like tacky. I am assuming it is businesses wanting to advertise to students that are your target audience, as well as students themselves.

Just a quick update.

The USA is now for sale for anyone who is remotely interested.

I've also added loads of new updates to the design of the site.

It may be worth a look.

Daniel
ownthemap.com

No asking price, just an online auction. Bidding starts at $0.01 and I'm just waiting for the listing to show up on eBay. The direct link is http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120007454048&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1 for anyone who wants to see the final outcome. Add it to your watch list.

Daniel
ownthemap.com

I have a scenario for you. I browsed your site, but didn't see any consideration for this. What if I lived in Russia and I HATED Ireland. I buy Ireland and post very, very offensive remarks about their country on it. What if you end up offending someone from another country and, in turn, they want to sue you for the remarks? Here in the US we have laws that protect us from being sued when someone else posts something on our site. But, this is not so for other countries. Do you have anything in place for this? Not trying to poke holes in your hose here (I frankly think it's a great idea), but the situation came up in a conversation I was having with a coworker....Just think about if someone bought a certain country and then put up certain religiously offensive cartoons on it?

I've considered this problem, but no offensive sites will be listed as stated in the auction. Those people who can change their URL in their control panel also require admin approval before they can change the site URL.

If they slip through the net, I'll remove their link. Easy as.

Aside from that there's not much else than can be done, I'm sure you'll agree. I've not had problems with this so far. Only a few people complaining that their country has be bought already by a foreign company. I guess its true to say that if you snooze you lose.