About Clickstarter
Where did we come from?
Although the name Clickstarter didn’t come about until late 2016 on the Gold Coast, the work of Clickstarter was being done as far back as 1996 when Dante St James built his first website using Netscape Composer on a Packard Bell 386 computer.
Dante took the concept to the place where he’d spend the largest chunk of his adult life; Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory. It’s where he’d carved out his media career, fallen in love, fallen out of love, changed careers and eaten a few too many fried foods from street markets.
What exactly is Clickstarter about?
You know how you can buy radio advertising from a radio station and TV advertising from a TV station, but when it comes to buying digital marketing, no one quite knows where to go?
Clickstarter addresses this by giving the small businesses of regional Australia up-front pricing, fair deals and a plain English explanation of what this digital marketing thing is all about.
Our idea clients are small and growing businesses in regional, rural and remote parts of Australia – because that’s where we are, and it’s what we know best.
What’s our mission?
Everyday Clickstarter strives to be the first choice for regional Australian small business when it comes to websites, social media management and digital marketing, but cutting through the tech talk, proving upfront pricing and finally making it simple to get business online, marketing online and growing sustainably without spending a fortune.
We will grow towards making Clickstarter as easy to approach for digital marketing as the local newspaper, radio or TV station is today.
What’s our vision?
Through sustainable business growth and staying true to our regional roots, we want to transform regional, rural and remote communities into the new micro hubs of innovation and digital business.
We aim to achieve this by:
+ being active in markets that others usually wouldn’t consider
+ actively working with competitors to legitimise and standardise the digital marketing industry which is currently a mess of fragmentation, over-the-top margins and “charge whatever we like” attitudes driven by the unsustainable practices pushed by business and marketing “gurus” who have no skin in our game and no heart for our communities.
+ freely sharing our knowledge, processes, trade secrets and methods with any freelancers, competitors or digital agencies that are like-minded
+ bringing digital skills and workforce-ready micro-credentialing to remote Indigenous youth, the elderly, the disadvantaged and other groups that are under-represented in the digital economy today.
Living out our purpose
While all business is about making money, there has to be a bigger reason to get out of bed in the morning and keep going. For Dante & our team, we have areas that we focus on to keep us accountable & ensure that we contribute to the world, not just take from it.
Women in Small Business
The world cannot move forward based upon the existing patriarchal paradigm. Something must shift. And it will take a combined effort from women and their allies to ensure that women are educated, empowered and able to own their own financial resources. If we don’t contribute to this, then we are part of the problem.
Regional Small Business
Where big-box retailers and corporate behemoths don’t dare enter, small family-owned and country-led businesses are taking a lead. As we emerge from a pandemic that has seen more attention placed on regional Australia, we are focused on making our services & educational resources available to regional small business.
Indigenous Business
The gap will not be closed by not-for-profit groups or government welfare programs. It will be closed when our First Nations people own their own means of production and financial security. By working with organisations like NTIBN, Many Rivers and others, we hope that we can open up pathways to business ownership for our first Australians.
LGBTIQA+ Youth
While marriage equality may have been achieved in Australia, there are still far too many young LGBTIQA+ Australians taking their own lives and self-harming. We are working towards more inclusive language in our podcasts & blogs to ensure we create a safe place for all people. If we miss something in this, please let us know. We are learning.
Community Contribution
10% of our revenue is given to causes we believe in. And 10% of the work we do is offered pro-bono. Sometimes we invest in a community project, or we offer train our priority groups free. This includes Indigenous, Womens, Youth, Migrant, Neuro-diverse and Senior groups. Please let us know if we can assist you in some way with what we do.
Reducing our footprint
We recycle all technology that is recyclable. Phones. Computers. Keyboards. They can all be recycled to a point. However, we need to do better with buying technology that has designed itself to be made obsolete. And we definitely need to do better with our travel carbon footprint. In 2022, our air travel will be reduced by at least 50%.
COVID vaccination
We are all double-vaccinated, and at this time, we consider this to be a mandatory requirement of employees. After all, they are who formed this policy, not the business. Our contractors make their own decisions around this issue. We support your choice around your own body. We also support our own choice around who we will work with.
Politics
If your politics involves supporting those who would seek to remove, reduce or challenge the human rights or dignity of women, racial minorities, gender-diverse, neuro-diverse, non-binary, LGBTIQA+, Aboriginal or disabled people, we don’t want to work with you. Other. than that we hold no political affiliations and support no political parties here or abroad.