We’ve completed 6 months from launching and we are once again back with some Darrbers statistics.
The number of Darrbers reached 64 and UAE is at the top with 19 Darrbers followed by Saudi with 18 and Egypt with 11.
Those three countries have 75% of registered Darrbers. Most of the items available are located within those countries as well.
With the above numbers, we find that around 10 Darrbers register every month. We will focus more on increasing this number.
We are planning to make the process of contacting Darrbers easier in order to allow more people to use their services. More updates will come once they are available
Techcrunch.com is one of the well known blogs that focus on web 2.0 companies and their news. They review sites on a daily basis, and become busy as many websites come into the game.
Techcrunch decided to allow its visitors to review the sites instead! They’ve created Elevator Pitches to allow startups CEOs and owners to describe their website in a 1 minute video.
An article reviewing Darrb.com was added on Arabcrunch.com covering the features offered by Darrb and how Darrbers can benefit from delivering items on their way.
Arabcrunch is one of the early Arabian blogs that is dedicated to reviewing Arab startups and existing Internet & Mobile companies and what they offer to their customers.
The article touched on good points, especially the areas for improvment. One of the great points was the integration between Darrb and other marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and others. This will allow people to ask for delivery when they buy something online.
This is my dream! It would be a huge milestone if we could manage to link marketplaces with Darrb to ask for delivery.
Since the concept of Darrb is very new and in order to make that happen, we are focusing on making the process of adding items and connecting with Darrbers easier for people. This step should pave the road for integrating with other marketplaces.
We’ve recently done some changes in the homepage of Darrb.com to add more valuable information for our visitors.
1. What do we do?
We’ve added a sentence that describes what Darrb.com is. Look at the picture below:
Now the new visitors will get to know what Darrb offers them immediately.
2. Statistics
We have done some changes in the statistics part as well. Now Darrbers can know how much money they can make if they delivered all the items available! This is an indicator that helps Darrbers know how much money is available to run for.
Some other changes where done to show the number of new items available instead of items delivered. We thought Darrbers want to know what is new to deliver, not what was delivered.
3. Free Registration
We have changed the tab that was saying “Your Profile” to better utilize the space and replaced it with “Free Registration”, which is serves as a link to the registration page.
4. SME Logo
We’ve added our membership logo of Mohamed bin Rashid Est. for young business leaders in the homepage to show that Darrb.com is serious about its business and its members.
Number of items being added is growing, and more changes are coming on the way. We’ll keep you updated!
One of the challenges that faces eCommrece in many parts of the world is the payment method, how would someone pay/receive money for his/her service or product?
There are many creative ways that are being used to overcome such challenges. One of the ways that was used in Darrb.com, is a trade between a service and a membership subscription!
The Darrber of the Shiekh Zayed Photos item asked the user if it was OK to get a 1 month subscription for a RapidShare account instead of sending him money. The user accepted the deal and the Darrber got his account after the delivery was over!
It’s true that not everyone wants a RapidShare account for his service, but this shows how different payment methods are really working for some people.
One of the very well known methods of sending money online is using PayPal, which has more than 100 million account! PayPal lets you send money to anyone with an email account. It is free for consumers, and works perfectly with different credit cards.
Users can pay Darrbers money safely through PayPal, all you need is a PayPal account and an email address of the Darrber.
have a look at this video to understand how it works:
The following links describe how to use PayPal to send money:
This announces a new shift on how the website is being used. People are willing to pay for items that require effort is searching, which might take some time for certain stuff. This opens the door for any service that requires knowledge on how to find things on the Internet and deliver them to the email of the person who asked for them!
Darrb.com will keep on supporting all its members on making the process of delivering stuff easier and affordable, whether its digital or physical delivery!
I still remember the old stories that my father and other people used to tell us about. They used to go from Dubai to Al Ain city or Abu Dhabi (~130 to 170 km distance) using a 4×4 Landrover and spend around 6 hours to reach their destination!
Today, people reach Al Ain in an hour and Abu Dhabi in 1 hour and 15 minutes on average.
What happened? What changed?
Difference:
The below picture was taken in the 1980’s (people think it’s in 1991, but it’s actually older than that) for Sh. Zayed Road, Dubai’s Main Highway:
(Thanks to the guys at uaecommunity.blogspot.com for coloring the picture).
Now look at the difference around 20 years later. Same place same angle:
I won’t talk about the towers, I will only concentrate on the roads and cars!
Roads are much better and wider. Cars are faster and a lot more efficient and comfortable. These things allow easy move of people and material.
I also remember when we used to go to Jebel Ali horse Racecourse 15 years ago. It was like a trip for us. We used to plan for it and wait for some weekend that will give us the reason to go through all that distance from the center of Dubai to the stable’s area.
Today, this area is known to be around DubaiMediaCity! Thousands of people go to this area on a daily basis, it’s a new part of Dubai that didn’t exist 9 years ago. I figured out that the distance is only 15 minutes away by today’s capabilities.
The infrastructure and mobility allowed people to move to different locations that were considered very far in old measures. The development of new infrastructure will make this gap smaller than ever. With the new metro, and future link with all Gulf countries, I think people will travel between them in few hours and remember the days they used to take a lot more time to go through the same distance.
Darrbers should be aware and use this opportunity to their side. It’s becoming easier to travel from one location to another and to move stuff from one point to another. You should be ready to be the first one to use such facilities when they become available.
People use technology to make life easier. If you plan to add an item through Darrb.com, one important way to save a lot of time, money and effort is to guide the Darrber to the location of your address (or destination address) in a very easy and straight forward way.
I remember once when I was going to receive an item through a delivery company. I started describing my location to the driver on the phone, he said “can you come and pick the item from our office? We don’t deliver to such locations”. I was amazed! The service was very bad and I had to convince him that his job is to deliver the item to my door because he was paid to do so, unless I choose to voluntarily pick up the item from their office.
This happened because the delivery company was not sure about the location when they agreed to deliver the item. Things like that can be avoided by describing the addresses in an easy way, which is where Google Maps kicks in.
When you add an item, use the following website and go to the location of the address:
http://maps.google.com, then click on “Link to this page” as it is shown in the above picture and copy/paste the link in the “other information” part of the bid as shown*:
*the above is an example of how Step 3 is when you add an item, you can add the link of the map to the other information would would like to share with the Darrbers.
This will make it very easy for Darrbers to understand where the location is. It saves a lot of time, money and effort.
As mentioned in a previous article, there are many reasons why International Darrbers are needed. They can act as forwarders that receive items within their city/country and forward them by normal mail to the country of the user.
A well known courier has recently increased its “forwarding” rates to offset the operating costs and the increase in fuel price. This courier is known for receiving items from the US (for people buying from Amazon, Ebay ..etc) and forwarding them to their owners in different countries that are not covered by the International shipment of such websites. This is the second time they increase their rates in 2008 and prices went up by nearly 50%.
The continuous increase in fuel price forces companies to increase their rates. As Darrbers, the impact is not huge as it is for companies. This adds another reason on why International Darrbers are needed to fill in this gap!
Darrbers from the US will have huge opportunities to forward stuff to many countries in the world by simply receiving items at their own location and forwarding them by mail to the address of the users.
