Posts filed under 'Internet Startup'
9 deadly startup diseases
Building a startup is hard. There are many problems that can hurt a startup—perhaps even kill it. This article examines some of the more common diseases that plague startups, and proposes some cures. All of these issues can be remedied if detected early enough, so it’s really worth being aware of them. That way, you can operate before they become fatal.
Startup Disease 1: The Imaginary User Syndrome
A product that’s not geared towards a specific user is unlikely to benefit anyone in particular; hence, there’s no such thing as a generic user. No matter how great your initial vision might seem, if you don’t have a target audience in mind, your startup will lack direction and flounder. In addition, it’s difficult to market to everyone, so not only will your product suffer, it’ll be hard to sell too.
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/nine-deadly-startup-diseases
Add comment August 14, 2008
Website Flippping
Dave Hermansen did not own a bird or a cage when he bought bird-cage.com, an online store, for $1,800 three years ago. He simply saw a Web site that was “very, very poorly done,” and begged the owners to sell it to him. He then redesigned the site, added advertising and drove up traffic. Last December, he sold it for $173,000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/technology/29flip.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Add comment July 30, 2008
Entrepreneur brings in $10 Million in 1st year
Murray set up the company in September last year after spending five years in R&D to get the technology up to scratch. She invested £200,000 of her own cash into the start-up, but it was tough going from the off. “I could have given up a thousand times,” says Murray. “There were so many complexities involved in designing the actual device. Radio is a black art, you can’t theorise a working system. It’s all about trial and error.”
The service currently boasts 4,000 customers. Murray predicts this figure will hit 10,000 by 2009 and pull in a turnover of £4m
2 comments June 26, 2008
Make Money While You Wait for people .
Waiting around for the cable guy tops the list of customer grievances about cable service, according to a recent survey by TeleNav, a company that makes GPS tracking devices. But one entrepreneur, Herve Aimable, sees opportunity in frustration. He runs a service in New York called Wait For Me. It’s exactly what it sounds like: He has hired and bonded five people who do nothing but wait in people’s homes for the cable guy. Each four-hour block costs $250. Since 2006, Aimable has brought in $60,000 from cable-sitting. “This is a valuable service, but it’s sort of a paradox, because you are getting paid for waiting,” Aimable says. Well, not just waiting—these are mostly actors. Says Aimable: “They sit around, they think, and they vocalize.”
Back to BWSmallBiz April/May 2008 Table of Contents
Quittner is a staff writer for BusinessWeek in New York
Add comment June 4, 2008
How to make money on the internet .
This is a video from the inventor or founder of Ruby on Rails .
Add comment May 31, 2008
pimpmysearch.com - Viral Marketing Genius
I dont know anything about this site but I keeo getting invitation mails from people I know . The site is about 1 month old and they already have an Alexa Ranking of about 2000
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/pimpmysearch.com
I dont know if they are making any money but this is a product that encourages viral marketing .
5 comments May 14, 2008
Tips for creating a successful new online product
There is much talk these days about building a product for a niche and making a lifestyle business out of it. Much of the online literature about starting up is focused on how to create some fantastic product which will gather millions of visitors and make you a billionaire, and the “new wave”, so to speak, proposes that rather than taking a 1 in 10’000 bet that you can make billions, it is better to take a 1 in 10 bet that you can make millions.
Since I have started two such businesses already, here are thirteen tips from my own experience.
What to build
1. Build for someone specific
It’s very tempting to create a product for the widest audience. “Everyone can use our product, therefore if even a tiny proportion use it, we’ll be rich!” Beware the generalised product. If your product is not built for anyone in particular, it will not be good for anyone in particular. The worst possible market for a product is “small businesses on the web”.
On the other hand, if you build something that is directly useful for even just one real human being, chances are there will be others like that user and your product will have some success.
2. Don’t be afraid of targeting a narrow niche
Niches have numerous advantages. There’s less competition in niches, which means that your marketing dollars will go further to get you new customers. It’ll be easier to target likely buyers since there are probably already channels (blogs, magazines, trade shows) targeting that niche, that you can make use of.
Niches also tend to be very badly served in today’s world. If you look into almost any niche you will find a plethora of awful products that are just begging to be replaced by something better suited. Being able to build great products cheaply is a fairly recent development, and most pre-existing businesses have had to make do with duct-taped, poorly conceived solutions that are begging to be replaced. The smaller the niche, the lower the bar to success.
3. Solve a real problem that costs money
As DHH pointed out, the way to realistic profitability is not through gathering an outrageous number of eyeballs, but through creating a product that people are willing to pay for. The easiest way to get someone to loosen their purse strings is to convince them that using your product will pay for itself
Full Story Here http://www.inter-sections.net/2008/05/07/13-tips-for-creating-a-successful-new-online-product/
Add comment May 8, 2008
MyFreeImplants.com - Another weired biz model .
ATLANTA — Hundreds of young Atlanta women are signed up on a Web site that some critics are calling total exploitation. The founders call it free enterprise. And just about everyone Channel 2 showed it to called it shocking. It’s called MyFreeImplants.com and it’s a donation site for young women who want free breast implants. But it’s what they do to get the big money that’s troubling for some.
“Everyone uses sex to sell. That’s what this really is. It’s marketing and this is America,” said MyFreeImplants.com founder Jay Moore.
MyFreeImplants.com is a business venture hatched at a bachelor party in Las Vegas to help young women raise thousands of dollars for breast augmentation surgery through online donors.
The Web site has taken off. Five-thousand women are now signed up. One woman took her bid for new breasts to YouTube.
The surgery isn’t cheap. It’s usually $4,000 for silicon implants and $5,000 for saline. The money is held in an account until the goal is reached and then sent directly to the surgeon selected.
But it’s how the women get the donations that is raising some people’s eyebrows.
Read Whole Article http://www.wsbtv.com/news/16061686/detail.html
3 comments April 29, 2008
Sold for $10 Million now worth $7 Billion
Today turns out to be the twenty year anniversary of when George Lucas sold Pixar to Steve Jobs. In the post, ”February 3, 1986: Divorce, Mogul Style,” Chris Seibold tells how Lucas decided to “see a smallish piece of his Lucas Film empire” to raise cash to settle his divorce. Given Lucas’ predicament, Steve Jobs was able to bring Lucas’ initial asking price of 30 million dollars to 10 million.
For years, the company Steve Jobs called a hobby was little but a serious money pit. Unexpectedly, Pixar became the source of the majority of Steve Jobs’ immense wealth after an extremely successful initial public offering. It was this month in 1986 that Steve first acquired the hobby that eventually paid off big.
On January 24 of this year, Disney announced paying $7.4 billion in stock to acquire Pixar. Jobs will be on Disney’s board of directors, and two executives from Pixar will head the new Pixar and Disney Animation Studios and lead the creative vision. See ”Disney buys Pixar” at CNET for more.
The takeaway for my Web 2.0 readers? On the one hand, be careful of the decisions you make when you’re in financial need (eg. startups trying to cash-out). On the other, your hobby (eg. your “little web app”) may sometimes become much more than that, but only if you take it seriously.
http://www.emilychang.com/go/weblog/comments/twenty-years-later-no-longer-just-a-hobby/
Add comment April 27, 2008
Making money on the web with videos .
Learning how to turn a flashlight into a laser is not a top priority for most people. Yet Kip Kedersha’s step-by-step instructional video that teaches how to do just that has been seen online by more people (1.88 million) than live in Manhattan (about 1.6 million).
Mr. Kedersha’s online library of 94 videos includes tips on how to chill a Coke in two minutes, simulate a gunshot wound and start up a PC quickly.
Many of the clips have been played hundreds of thousands of times, turning Mr. Kedersha into the top earner on Metacafe, a video-sharing Web site that pays the makers of popular videos. In little more than a year, the site has written him checks totaling $102,000.
That puts Mr. Kedersha, a 50-year-old video producer from St. Petersburg, Fla., near the front of the latest online stampede: the rush to capitalize on the popularity of how-to videos on the Web.
“You never know when something like this is going to go away,” Mr. Kedersha said. “I better ride the wave.
Add comment April 27, 2008
SnagAJob.com Brings in $11 Million a Year
Eight years later, Boyer’s business has grown from just two employees to 110 full-time employees. The company grossed sales of $11 million in 2007.
To read about the runners-up and to follow the events of National Small Business Week, check out the National Small Business Week website.
2 comments April 26, 2008
Domain Name Pizza.com sold for $2.6 Million
When Chris Clark bought Pizza.com for $20 in the mid-1990s, he never expected that almost 15 years later, the seemingly benign domain name would sell for $2.6 million.
In 1994, the earliest days of the Internet’s popularity, the North Potomac resident was working as a Web site developer. He bought Pizza.com, hoping to entice a major pizza company to the new world of the Web.
“We wanted to put the first pizza company on the Internet,” Clark said, referring to his company at the time, Internet Information Services. “At the time, we were explaining what the Internet was to them. . . . It didn’t catch on quickly.”
Although he was unsuccessful in achieving his goal, he maintained the site, which features a pizza restaurant locator and pizza-related polls and games, over the years.
When Vodka.com recently sold for $3 million, Clark decided to check out the interest in Pizza.com. “We put a forum on the Web site that said, if you’re interested in buying the domain name, let us know,” Clark said.
The entrepreneur got so much feedback he decided to turn over the bidding to an online auction house, Sedo.com — the same company that auctioned off Vodka.com — and watched the offers begin to skyrocket.
“The auction went on for a week,” Clark said. “My family was just huddled over the computer watching.”
Clark was vacationing in Disney World with his family, watching the auction on a laptop, when the bidding topped $1 million. Soon after, he sold the site for $2.6 million to an anonymous bidder.
“When we saw the final bid, it was far beyond our expectations,” Clark said.
He said he hopes to use the proceeds to grow his new software company, Minestream Software, which sells Internet protection software to homes and businesses
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/16/AR2008041602014.html
Add comment April 24, 2008
Online Toy Rental Company
I saw this on MSNBC . It is an interesting business
Add comment February 12, 2008
Prevent SideJAcking
Prevent sidejacking .. That is people can see and copy and steal what your doing when you use a public hotspot ..
Download Hotspot Shield from www.anchorfree.com
Add comment February 2, 2008
Invest in License Plates
This is one of those things that make you go .. Hmm .. People are paying Millions of Dollars for Custom or vanity license plates . !!!!!!!! WHAT !!!!!!!!! See video below
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/02/01/dinnick.vanity.plates.cnn?iref=mpvideosview
Add comment February 2, 2008
Millionaire dies in plane crash .
Note to self . Never fly in small plane .
So … I was reading the article below today and I was shocked at some of the comments that followed the article ..
I mean some people … Let me rephrase that . A lot of people are not happy if you are successful . Read the article below . What do you think ??
You should really never start a sentence with .. SO
Add comment February 2, 2008
Young founder of online networking site is off to a fast start
Two years in the planning and launched last April, the website grossed an estimated $1 million in less than nine months last year. The revenue was generated by an advertiser list that has grown to 40 clients, including the hefty likes of Pitney Bowes, Hewlett-Packard, United Parcel Service, Citrix and VistaPrint.
Here’s the kicker: Nielsen, a 2003 graduate in entrepreneurial studies of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, was a sophomore when he started the first company. And now, with a business model that has attracted 10,000 members and 90,000 visitors a month, the gent is just 25
Add comment January 17, 2008
Affiliate that Earns $300,000 a Month at 19
Paul Bourque started affiliate marketing less than a year ago and now is earning over $300,000 a month from AzoogleAds. Paul is current 19 years old and has done so well for himself over the past year he decided to drop out of college and work full time as an affiliate marketer. Aside from his obsession with conquering the internet, Paul enjoys spending his time with friends and family and plans to move into his dream house in early 2008
http://retireat21.com/interview/interview-with-paul-bourque-affiliate-marketing-super-star
1 comment January 17, 2008
Top 20 websites run by people under 30
CLICK LINK http://www.retireat21.com/top-young-entrepreneurs/
| 1 | Mark Zuckerberg | 23 | $700 MIllion | 7 | |||
| 2 | Andrew Gower | Runescape | 28 | $650 MIllion | 388 | ||
| 3 | Blake Ross and David Hyatt | Mozilla | 22 | $120 MIllion | 112 | ||
| 4 | Chad Hurley | Youtube | 30 | $85 MIllion | 3 | ||
| 5 | Angelo Sotira | Deviant ART | 26 | $75 MIllion | 57 | ||
| 6 | John Vechey | PopCap Games | 28 | $60 MIllion | 3914 | ||
| 7 | Alexander Levin | WordPress | 23 | $57 MIllion | 59 | ||
| 8 | Alexander Levin | Image Shack | 23 | $56 MIllion | 36 | ||
| 9 | Jake Nickell | Threadless | 28 | $50 MIllion | 4,275 | ||
| 10 | Sean Belnick | Biz Chair | 20 | $42 MIllion | 72,086 |
1 comment January 16, 2008
