SendMyCard and its New Personalised Card Site Mumscat

This article details covers the past, present and future plans for the domain names SendMyCard  and MumsCat It also tries to identify why the SendMyCard domain name seemed to have no value in 2008.

The Sendmycard.co.uk domain name was purchased in 2008 by its current owner when an IT friend who working in London realised he had nearly forgotten a birthday and needed to send a birthday card that same day. He did not want to spend valuable time finding, buying, writing and posting 'a real card'. It was realised  that if there was a website he could use to 'send his card'  this would have been very useful.
A brainstorming session followed and the name sendmycard was thought of, a quick check showed that sendmycard.co.uk was available and so it was purchased for a very low amount of money (around £10.00)

The History of the Domain name
The domain name was 'googled' and an article was found from around 2004.
This detailed how teenage tycoons were turning their bedrooms into boardrooms in a bid to boost their pocket money. It said how  five young entrepreneurs were swapping smelly socks for spreadsheets and how their bright business idea could soon feature in a top TV show.
Channel 4 had launched the nationwide Bedroom Britain search five months previously and had been looking for youngsters who had been trying to 'build business empires' in their homes.
The programme makers with Channel 4 and Media 19 made a shortlist of the best business concepts, including five from the North of England.
A young entrepreneur (Sean) who was an e-business student from Stockton, Teesside came up with the very original idea of Sendmycard which was an inspired way to remember special occasions and send greetings cards, personalised cards, birthday cards, wedding cards, anniversary cards through an online service.
Browsers would be able pick cards on the site to send to a loved one . . . then Sean will write it and send it.
He had searched the internet for a similar service but drew a blank, apart from finding numerous e-card websites. The idea at that time was very original, and like all good ideas has been copied by a number of sites.
He identified that customers who might normally have forgotten birthdays could order birthday and anniversary cards well in advance, and the site would do a selection of greeting cards as well as birthday cards.
He had high hopes for sendmycard and even re-arranged his studies. Family and friends were all hoping the idea received the rewards it deserved.
It is thought that something must have gone wrong during the following few years or the domain name would not have become available again?

SendMyCard starts again in 2008
Cards were purchased and with great optimism, the site went live, lots of card categories were covered, Birthday cards, Mothers Day cards, Fathers Day cards, Valentines Day cards, but the sales were disappointing.
The site was remade (using Zencart) but there was no great improvement. After 6 months, the site was remade again, this time using a SEO company, Drupal and Ubercart, just in time for Fathers Day. Emails to potential customers were sent out, reminding them it was Fathers day soon, and a sum of money was invested in pay-per-click.
Pay per click was costing around £1.00  for each click, regardless of whether the person purchased a card, so the decision was made to use SEO instead of pay per click.
Using this approach, the business has seen slow but steady growth and is now ready to expand into the area of personalised cards.
It was necessary to choose a domain name, and the formula of 'not more than 8 characters' and trying to use words that are easy to remember was used. Examples of websites using this formula are face book and moon pig; they are made up of words that children learn when they first start to talk. After a lot of searching the name Mums Cat was found.
Using Drupal and Ubercart, SEOCompany4 is now building the MumsCat personalised card site.