Blogging: Is Blogging Dead?
tl;dr Some are questioning if blogging is alive or dead. Blogging is certainly not dead, it continues to rapidly evolve.
Is Blogging Dead?
Blogging is not dead.
Although the conventional notions of traditional old school blogging are most likely outdated.
Blogging or writing online has changed rapidly in the past few decades. Anyone can create and publish an extensive body of writing, video and photos. Blogging has become a mainstream hobby. Microblogging is intensively easy and popular.
The ease of publishing has flooded the market and pushed traditional print authors into online forums. This has essentially made gaining and audience via blogging extremely competitive. It is hard to stand out from the crowd and maintain a following.
The advent of online advertising has also spurred terrabytes of lifeless content to drive quantity (traffic), rather than quality. How can a sole blogger compete with an army of content aggregators and Search Engine Optimisers?
The days of hard coding your blog posts in HTML and having intellectual dialogue with like minded individuals is dwindling. Mass media professional bloggers are taking over with paid subscription and mass advertising models. Reputation, backing and infrastructure are keys to being noticed in this crowded space.
Blogging is not dead, it just continues to evolve.
Got an opinion on the topic? Then please leave us a comment!
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You might also enjoy:
+ Our Table of Contents
+ Blogging: How Do You Promote Your Blog Posts?
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
+ Startup Weekend: How to prepare? (Day 0)
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Twitter Introduces Vine – Post 6 Second Videos Online
In 6 seconds…
Twitter introduces 6-second video tweets. Will audiences tune in or out? What scandals will it create? And will it generate revenue? Read more below…
Tweets
In 2006 Twitter introduced the world to an online social networking service that enabled its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters. They introduced a web based platform for broadcasting short messages. It came at a time when mobile phones were becoming smart and people were already hooked on text messaging and instant chat. Now Twitter have 500 million registered users, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day.
Veets?
This month they introduced Vine, available via iTunes in app format. Vine allows users to tweet 6-second video.
According to iTunes:
“Vine is the best way to see and share life in motion. Create short, beautiful, looping videos in a simple and fun way for your friends and family to see.”
Will users be attracted to such short video? Will users be able to cope with streams of video tweets? Will this be information overload?
Danger
To the creative this may be another avenue to showcase their talents. However as we have seen with Twitter, being able to broadcast a message or photo to millions in an instance is a recipe for disaster.
Revenue
Since inception pundits have been trying to determine how Twitter can monetise it’s data. Will video shorts open the gateway for paid video advertising?
It feels as if Twitter is looking to extends it’s capability from plain text and photos into video. Facebook and YouTube have shown the benefit in these mediums. Smartphones already offer the technology. However will users buy into such short film? Only time will tell.
.
You might also enjoy:
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
+ The Bootstrap Challenge – Walking the Talk
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
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Product Functionality Often Trumps Beauty
tl;dr Reddit built a platform that met the needs of visitors it attracted. By having a functional website that appeals to a wide community, appearance was not as important as maintaining it’s client base. When building a product remember – product, price, place and promotion.
Why Product Functionality Often Trumps Beauty?
Recently someone asked Why is reddit so famous despite such a boring interface?
Google, Craigslist, Facebook, Wikipedia, Amazon, Quora and Reddit. All these popular companies began their lives with basic, simple, boring and sometimes plain ugly websites. Many still retain the boring interfaces but maintain a user base of millions of users.
These sites provide functionality that fulfils the desires of it’s users, with or without beautiful front end experiences. When designing your new product or minimum viable product, consider the core functionality instead of getting stuck of the appearance. Your fancy looking product is useless if it cannot actually do anything.
When planning your product, consider the following:
+ Good functionality typically wins over beautiful design.
Google started as a great search engine with a simplistic user interface. It didn’t need to be beautiful to bring back accurate search results.
Craigslist looks ugly but delivers a service to it’s customers. After all how beautiful does a classified adverts site have to look?
+ Ugly can triumph beauty.
Web marketers have seen ugly banner adverts attaining higher conversion rates than more colourful and attractive adverts. Humans are sometimes drawn to ugly and boring. Sometimes ugly websites can go viral.
+ Marketing comes down to four p’s. You need to think about all four.
Often ugly sites have an intelligence and powerful marketing campaign and/or are incredible flexible. PlentyOfFish spent money on advertising to attract visitors and constantly improved functionality to meet customer needs.
Note: If you particular niche or competitive advantage is design, then obviously beauty plays a part. For the rest of us, look at providing your prospective customers with something functional.
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You might also enjoy:
+ Our Table of Contents
+ Blogging: How Do You Promote Your Blog Posts?
+ Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) – Ugly Websites That Went Viral
+ Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
+ Startup Weekend: How to prepare? (Day 0)
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
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How to go from Idea Guy to Execution Guy?
Great Expecations
You are always thinking up great ideas. Good, bad the ugly. Your bedside notebook is full of brilliant ideas to turn you into the next business billionare. One problem, you never execute any of these ideas.
The Idea Guy
A recent question to Quora asked: How do I go from being an idea/vision guy to an idea and execution guy?
It strikes at the very problem many entreprenuers face. How do we get started? How do we take these ideas and make them real? Execution (good or bad) seperates the men from the boys…
Start Executing
Want to go from day dreamer to execution guru. Here are some steps. Be warned you may actually execute something!
1) Open your idea notebook – If you have one, open it to page 1. If you don’t have one, you ask yourself ig you really are the “ideas” guy.
Inc.com writes: “Get them out of your head and onto paper. Having all of this brilliance trapped in your brain is exhausting – it wants out!”
2) Choose an idea – Pick the easiet and smallest idea you have. Pick one.
3) Execute – That’s right. Give yourself one month to execute that idea.
Add a reminder in your calendar, stick a post-it on your front door. For the next 30/31 days you need to deliver.
4) Complete – If you executed the idea, congrate yourself and pick the next idea to execute. If you failed, keep going until the idea is executed.
5) Practice – Practice makes perfect. Keep refining your execution skills and proving to yourself and others you have atarck record of delivering.
Did these steps help? Did you execute? Let us know.
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You might also enjoy:
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
+ The Bootstrap Challenge – Walking the Talk
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
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Blogging: How To Get New Traffic To Old Blog Posts?
Blog Promotion
A recent Quora question asked How do you promote old blog posts?
Often a new post gains a high spike in interest when first posted. This is commonly due to promotion on social media and general timeliness of the content. After time, this attention drops off. Good posts should not be forgotten and can still be used to drive traffic.
Old But Not Forgotten
The following 10 tips may help you attract attention to your older blog posts.
1) Remember the footer: Add a footer on all new posts to older (relevant) posts. The “You might also enjoy reading this” WordPress widget can do this automatically.
2) Add links: Add a menu bar or column that includes links to older/archived articles. This includes using sitemaps, archives and tag clouds.
3) Use categories: Ensure posts have tags and categories.
4) References: Reference older posts in new posts. For example: Back in 2010 I wrote about XYZ…
5) Create a series: Many older posts can easily gel together with newer ones.
6) Updates: Add updates to older posts. A simple “Updated (Date)” with a couple of words at the top of an older post may bring attract visitors.
7) Advertise: Share older post links on other social media site you use. In forums and community sites members may ask for advice that your older blog posts can answer.
8) Avoid Repetition: Avoid reposting older posts verbatim. This may damage your search engine rankings.
9) Analytics: Study your analytics. Discover how your visitors land on your blog and exploit these “doorways”. Remember that not all visitors will first land on your index/front page.
10) Other mediums: Utilise other communication methods to promote older posts. If you have a regular email newsletter, consider adding links to older posts in these messages.
Did these work for you? Have you got some suggestions? Leave us a comment!
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You might also enjoy:
+ Our Table of Contents
+ Blogging: How Do You Promote Your Blog Posts?
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
+ Startup Weekend: How to prepare? (Day 0)
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
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Join the conversation: Leave a comment or tweet this post.
The Problem with Twitter – Social Disconnection by Stealth
tl;dr Twenty new Twitter followers in a week but a fall in our net position. Should social media sites allow users to end connections by stealth? Is Twitter the new watering hole for scammers and opportunists?
Introduction
Before we begin, we need to make it clear we like Twitter. It has created a simple tool to connect millions of people. It has built a diverse network that has changed the way many of us communicate and opened up new possibilities for others. Various recent uprisings around the world have demonstrated the strength of mass electronic communication.
However one of our biggest gripes with Twitter is the following functionality, or more so the unfollowing functionality. We frequently receive follow email notifications telling us we have gained new followers. This is great however in the past few months we have lost our trust in these notifications.
This week we received approximately 20 new follower notifications. Awesome, new followers to interact with. In reality our net position fell. Many of these followers are no longer following us. Twitter is not alone here.
Why? What is going on here? Is being unable to break a social media connection by stealth a good thing?
Reasons for Breaking Up (Intentional or Unintentional)
Not all break ups may be intentional. However it feels like too many are trying to lure us in for a unbalanced relationship.
+ Spammers: Social media sites have been plagued by spam and dummy accounts looking to leverage large networks of followers. Twitter appears to be more aggressively pursuing such accounts and deactivating accounts as they appear. Therefore many new followers are likely very soon to become dormant.
+ Tools: With the increase of social media options, various tools have been made available to manage your accounts. Algorithms help you follow and unfollow other users, tailoring your network to your interests. The problem is that a button click may radically modify your network. In one click you start following 100 people, then in the next click you have mistakenly unfollowed the same 100 users.
+ Ratio: The desire may be for users looking to achieve the perfect ratio of “followers to followings”. They use a false connection request to lure in new followers, while unscrupulously maintaining a low following figure. This may have financial value for those looking to sell such accounts.
+ Mistake: Twitter makes it remarkably easy to follow/unfollow users (in error). It is not always clear that a single click on the “follow” button results in a follow.
+ Bugs: Users have reported problems with Twitter removing followers with their authorisation. Legitimate connections are being mysteriously broken.
+ Dislike: Obviously there will be cases where a user genuinely ends the relationship by intentionally unfollowing a user.
The combination of the above may be enough to explain the current high churn of new followers. Spammers have always remained in front of the curve. E-mail has got smarter and applications like Twitter are the next watering hole for ‘fake viagra peddlers’ and ‘Nigerian money scammers’.
Unfollowing in Stealth
The majority of social media sites alert you to when someone wants to make a new connection. However very few (if any) send you a notification of when that connection ends. This seems in contrast to the “making of a new connection” where there is complete transparency.
The current process:
1. Mike logs into account
2. Mike identifies Peter to connect with
3. Mike send a new connection request
3a. Sometimes Peter may need to authorise connection request
3b. Peter authorises connection
4. Mike notified of new connection
5. Mike breaks connection
6. No notification sent to Peter
7. Peter doesn’t know connection broken
Benefits of Stealth
It seems odd that the making of a connection are so open, however the closing of a connection are almost secret. What is the benefit to the network?
The clearest benefit seems to avoid social awkwardness for users. Generalising, the majority of humans wish to avoid conflict and by allowing discreet disconnection all parties can continue participating without the awkwardness. At least, until disconnected party realises they have been dumped.
From one angle it seems unreasonable to expect parties to authorise the break of the relationship. This may inadvertently increase the psychological barrier for creating new connections and reducing the effectiveness of the network. In contrast, many people are quick to rush into things even when implications are high (e.g. financial contracts with penalties for exiting). Attaching penalties on exit may not discourage users forming new connections.
Would building a social network based on full transparency mean a better community? Would penalising breaking connections be effective?
No Conclusions
There are various third party applications online to track your followers and unfollowers. It remains unknown if Twitter and others will enable this functionality within their own environments. For now we just need to accept that it is a better user experience to know about new connections…
Image Credit: Pluggio
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You might also enjoy:
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
+ The Bootstrap Challenge – Walking the Talk
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
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Thinking of Starting a Startup? 8 Sentiments To Think About
Startups for the Rest of Us
Mike Taber and Rob Walling record an awesome regular podcast called “Startups for the Rest of Us“. It’s aimed at helping developers, designers and entrepreneurs launch their startup product. They have just hit their 100th episode and you can check out older recordings or episode transcripts on their website.
In episode 98 they share “eight sentiments that do not bode well for your startup”.
The Eight Sentiments
1. “This product idea is awesome. Now off to the basement to build it; see you in 6 months!”
2. “I haven’t even finished the features I want to build yet and potential customers are already asking me to build X.” Translation: “I’m sticking to my product idea no matter what my potential customers tell me.”
3. “I’m halfway done with this idea… but that shiny new one over there seems so much better.”
4. “I plan to quite my job 60 days after I launch.”
5. “It would take me as much time to explain this task to someone else, so I’ll just do it myself.”
6. “I don’t want to bother with all that click through and conversion rate nonsense…I’ll just build a great product.” Translation: “Build a better mousetrap is not a good strategy”
7. “My idea is pretty hard to explain, do you have 20 minutes to spare?”
8. “I don’t want to talk publicly about my idea because someone might steal it.”
Summary
These are excellent points. The message is do not keep your idea a secret. Speak to people, especially customers and listen and apply their feedback. You need to be able to articulate your idea clearly and be open to suggestions. Do not build and ship in isolation!
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You might also enjoy:
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
+ Startup Weekend: How to prepare? (Day 0)
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
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Lessons Learned – Be Your Own Boss
Be Your Own Boss
The new entrepreneur TV series “Be Your Own Boss” started a couple of weeks ago on the BBC. This is an extension to the BBC’s portfolio of pop-business productions that includes Dragons Den and The Apprentice.
These shows are definitely pitched at the mainstream and simplify aspects of starting a business. The X-Factor style delivery can easily be criticised. Nevertheless Be Your Own Boss proves to offer some real nuggets to aspiring entrepreneurs. It preaches the freedom and satisfaction that can come from building your own business. Noble aspirations in times the current climate of high unemployment and declining opportunities for young people.
Innocent Drinks
The show follows Innocent Drinks co-founder Richard Reed and his search for bright minds with great ideas to invest in. Richard’s own story is inspiring.
From Wikipedia:
+ Innocent was founded by three graduates – Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright.
+ In 1998, after spending six months working on smoothie recipes and £500 on fruit, the trio sold their drinks from a stall at a music festival in London.
+ People were asked to put their empty bottles in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ bin depending on whether they thought the three should quit their jobs to make smoothies. At the end of the festival the ‘YES’ bin was full, with only three cups in the ‘NO’ bin, so they went to their work the next day and resigned.
+ Had a lucky break when Maurice Pinto, a wealthy American businessman decided to invest £250,000.
+ In total, it took fifteen months from the initial idea to taking the product to market.
+ In 2009 the company sold a small stake of between 10 and 20% to The Coca-Cola Company, with the three founders retaining all operational control for £30 million.
+ In 2010 Coca-Cola increased its stake in the company to 58% from 18% for about £65 million.
+ The three founders continue to retain full operational control.
Lessons from the Boss
Richard is brutally honest to hopeful candidates and rightly so. How can people seriously ask to use someone’s money to “conduct market research” or “advertise”?
In a way he is the typical angel investor seeking to reapply their recipe of success to others. Richard is constantly talking about the virtues of aiming big and getting into supermarkets; and knocking on doors of retailers to know if the product has any demand.
He also dismisses some ideas he is not passionate about. Rightly so given it will be his time and money he is investing. However occasionally he seems a little too quick to dismiss a pitch. Maybe some of the detail is lost in the editing.
The key points that stand out:
+ Validate your idea and product immediately. Determine if a market and demand exist.
+ Speak to people and potential customers.
+ Forget social media. You need to knock on doors and speak to people.
+ Get orders. The ultimate sign of a good idea is selling (even it is pre-selling before the product is available).
+ Be serious and take advise. Don’t expect investment if you’re closed or not at the right stage for investment.
+ Know your strategy.
There are many more, but the message of getting outside the building and conducting customer development is clear.
Stay Tuned
The series is entertaining and even features the occasional cameo from business legend Richard Branson. So far Richard Reed (not Branson) has invested in a couple of clever ideas. Let’s see if they reap him as much reward as Innocent.
Some of the Ventures so far (more here):
Week 1: Mango Bikes
Week 2: Twists Pasta Bar
Week 3: MixPixie
Image Credit: BBC
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You might also enjoy:
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
+ The Bootstrap Challenge – Walking the Talk
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
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Online Advertising Experiment with Google AdWords
tl;dr By using a Google AdWords credit voucher we learned an obvious lesson – buying traffic is expensive and Internet marketing (web marketing) is a science. Paid adverts can help compliment an existing organic/SEO strategy.
The Experiment
In March 2012 Google kindly provided us with a credit voucher to test out Google Adwords. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out online advertising and potentially pull in some traffic to our blog (all for free!).
We spent £24.53 in 89 days to get 290 clicks (0.17%) and 166,800 impressions. However recent tweaking has yielded us 166 clicks (CTR 0.42%) in 13 days off £2.79 of spend.
If you are interested in traffic, you may want to read our 10,000 page view article.
The Evolution of Online Advertising
The web has radically evolved in the past decade. Web advertising has moved from irrelevant blinking banner adverts to well targeted text and multimedia adverts. Spam and advert blockers have made it harder for unsolicited or unscrupulous messages to reach us. Nevertheless the end user experience is still flooded by advertisers screaming for our attention. Getting the right message, to the right people is even tougher.
Google AdWords have developed a sophisticated advertising suite to tailor your adverts to the right keywords searches, websites and demographics. The available analytics is useful in identifying what works and what doesn’t.
Lessons Learned
Using a minimal daily budget (<$£0.50) we created and road tested 6 adverts. In summary we learned:
+ The number and type of keywords counts – Our early adverts were associated to less than 20 keywords. Once we increased the list to 100+ we noticed an instant increase in clicks and impressions.
+ The right type of traffic is important – Add keywords but ensure they are relevant to your site otherwise you risk bringing in the wrong visitors.
+ Our keywords – There is no clear winner when it comes the keywords we used. The following keywords sit at the top with a long tail for the remainder of keywords. (Group A = 5 clicks) home business, home business opportunities, business opportunities; (Group B = 20 clicks) start your own business, start a business, build a business (Group C = 67 clicks) startup, startups.
+ Paid advertising is expensive – Google AdWords is expensive and better alternative may exist. You may consider advertising in a industry/niche newsletter or online magazine rather than spending money on Google.
+ Paid traffic can help support your organic page rankings – Page ranking on Google can be ‘make or break’. Therefore paid traffic may help secure or boost your page ranking on Google.
+ Paid traffic can help with your sales funnel (if you have one) – If you are selling something, paying x for a visitor may well be worth the spend. You just need to make sure you can convert many of the visitors and you have some mechanisms to track conversions.
The Adverts and Results
Between March and September we set up a campaign with 6 adverts:
Ad Group #1:
Lean Startup Tips
Winning new business ideas!
Launch with success.
sparknlaunch.wordpress.com
Days active: 89
Clicks: 38
Impressions: 81,902
Click Through Rate (CTR): 0.05%
Average Cost Per Click (CPC): £0.18
Cost: £7.02
Average Position: 3.8
Ad Group #2:
Entrepreneur Startup Blog
Lessons in business startup.
Turn a business idea into reality.
sparknlaunch.wordpress.com
Days active: 89
Clicks: 7
Impressions: 22,666
Click Through Rate (CTR): 0.03%
Average Cost Per Click (CPC): £0.19
Cost: £1.35
Average Position: 3.8
Ad Group #3:
Business / Tech Startups
News and stories on startups.
Ideas for business startups.
sparknlaunch.wordpress.com
Days active: 89
Clicks: 1
Impressions: 481
Click Through Rate (CTR): 0.21%
Average Cost Per Click (CPC): £0.22
Cost: £0.22
Average Position: 5.7
Ad Group #4:
Want Startup Success?
Interested in lean startup, models?
We share our experiences.
sparknlaunch.wordpress.com
Days active: 77
Clicks: 77
Impressions: 21,637
Click Through Rate (CTR): 0.36%
Average Cost Per Click (CPC): £0.17
Cost: £12.80
Average Position: 5.5
**** Ad Group #5: ****
Want Business Success?
Winning new business ideas!
Launch with success.
sparknlaunch.wordpress.com
Days active: 13
Clicks: 166
Impressions: 39,946
Click Through Rate (CTR): 0.42%
Average Cost Per Click (CPC): £0.02
Cost: £2.79
Average Position: 2.4
Ad Group #6:
Startup Success Stories?
Learn from the best startups.
Tools podcasts videos ebooks.
sparknlaunch.wordpress.com
Days active: 89
Clicks: 1
Impressions: 179
Click Through Rate (CTR): 0.56%
Average Cost Per Click (CPC): £0.35
Cost: £0.35
Average Position: 6.5
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You might also enjoy:
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
+ Startup Weekend: How to prepare? (Day 0)
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
Where to next? Check out a random article.
Stay in touch: Check us out via RSS Feed, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.
Join the conversation: Leave a comment or tweet this post.
Lessons Learned From 10,000 Page Views
tl;dr We looked back on our last 10,000 page views. We found: 1) Traffic spikes help, 2) Being unloved hurts, 3) Google search Rocks, 4) Social media sux, 5) Google images draws in questionable traffic, 6) Low click rates hurt, 7) Spam is out of control, 8) More bots than humans visit the site.
Introduction
There is the old adage of the past best is the best predictor of future. Some say we just have to look back in the past to forecast our likely future. With this in mind we decided to look back on our last 10,000 blog views (page views). Hopefully the future is going to be brighter than the past…
We took figures from our standard WordPress Dashboard. The numbers represent the count of “views” and are not unique. In most cases we have only provided a cut of the top figures rather than the full list (due to the very long tail of results).
Lessons Learned
The results are hardly impressive or surprising.
1. Traffic Spikes Help
The odd news spike from news aggregator sites managed to haul in a large amount of short term activity. Activity quickly diminished but spikes did keep post links alive in social media sites (eg Twitter, Facebook) and news readers (eg Google Reader).
2. Being Unloved Hurts
Articles that never had the fortune of gaining large attention remain unloved.
3. Google Search Rocks
While many preach the power of social media, the bulk of referral traffic has come from Google. Yahoo and Bing are well behind.
4. Social Media Sux
Our experience with social media is extremely poor. Hardly any activity turns into visits. A Facebook Like, a Twitter Tweet and Google +1 are meaningless in converting into visits.
5. The Power of (Google) Images
Oddly Google Images yield the bulk of Google traffic (636 of 921 Google Search Engine views). It is questionable the value of this traffic.
6. Low Click Rate
It is rare that a visitor clicks on any/many links. We are not worried about external links however concerned about the low internal click rate. We added a standard footer to all our posts a few months ago that has made some improvement.
7. Spam Is Out of Control
Traffic is on the decline but spam is out of control (increasing from 7 to 777 per month).
8. Too Many Spam Bots
The large amount of spam may well be automated (ie sent by a bot) rather than by a human.
Summary
It feels as web traffic is much like catching waves in the ocean. Catch a good wave and you can ride it into shore. Catch no wave and you’re left floundering with the (spam) sharks.
The numbers are posted below. Get in touch if you have anything to add.
Happy swimming!
The Numbers
Top 10 Posts
The following summarises the top 10 posts by number of post views.
Views / Post
3402 Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
1404 Home page / Archives
1314 How do you get on the Frontpage of Hacker News?
285 Glossary
240 Learning From Other Startups
234 KISS – Ugly Websites That Went Viral
212 The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #2
205 The Apprentice – Lean Startup Builds MVP?
204 The London Olympics 2012 (In Infographics)
190 How To Get Traction? Or Why Is My Startup Broken?
Comments:
- One Hacker News submission sent 2,958 visitors to our blog in one single day (Described here).
Top 10 Referrers
The following summarises the top 10 referrers by number of post views.
Views / Referrer
2988 Hacker News
921 Search Engines
462 hackful.com
358 Twitter
342 Google Reader
179 StumbleUpon
126 quora.com
101 Facebook
93 bbc.co.uk
63 WordPress Dashboard
(Note: Added 146 to hacker news for HN aggregators)
Comments:
- Community sites have helped draw majority of traffic.
- Popular posts often get captured by Google Reader and Twitter, growing interest for a short term period then quickly dying off.
Top 5 Search Engines
The following summarises the top 5 referrer search engines by number of post views.
Views / Search Engine
921 Google Search
636 Google Image Search
11 Ask.com
7 Bing
4 Yahoo Search
Comments:
- Large amount of traffic from image search. Bulk with Google.
- Using Adwords and Facebook however minimal spend.
- WordPress Dashboard may be self clicks.
Top 10 Countries
The following summarises the top 10 visitor countries by number of post views.
Views / Country
4308 United States
1572 United Kingdom
464 Canada
377 India
299 Germany
254 Australia
163 France
151 Brazil
131 Netherlands
118 Sweden
Comments:
- In total there have been visitors from over 106 countries.
Top Search Terms
The following summarises the top search terms by number of post views.
- startup glossary, startup dictionary, buzzwords, biz buzzwords
- minimum viable product, mvp, pivot
- business guru, business gurus, biz advice, startup advice, how to launch
- new startups, top uk startups, top 100 startups, best startups
- hackers, hacker news
- startup podcasts, startup tools
- startup funding, business finance, crowdfunding
Comments:
- Hundreds of variations however mainly focused on “startups” and “business”.
Top 10 Clicks
The following summarises the top 10 visitor clicks by number of post views.
Clicks / URL
167 quora.com
87 Hacker News
85 kickstarter.com
82 startups.co.uk
70 sparknlaunch.files.wordpress.com
39 techzinglive.com
26 bbc.co.uk
25 Twitter
23 Reddit
Internal:
67 sparknlaunch.files.wordpress.com/ (Images)
3 sparknlaunch.files.wordpress.com/ (Files)
Comments:
- Very low internal click rate.
- Bulk of clicks appear to be on images. May suggest users behaviour or other sites recycling images.
- Poor reflection on the ability of site to retain visitors.
Top Comments
The following summarises the number of comments.
Comments / Category
1590 spam
396 ham
2 missed spam
4 false positives
95 Comments
Comments:
- Spam is the unwanted commercial comments.
- Ham are legitimate comments.
- The high amount of spam comments hints that bulk of visitors to the blog are just spammers or spammer bots.
Comments Per Month
The following summarises the number of spam comments by month.
Comments / Month
7 Feb
36 Mar
101 Apr
172 May
160 Jun
541 Jul
777 Aug
Comments:
- Strangely traffic has gone down but spam comments have gone up.
- February caught 7 comments versus 777 in August!
Image Credit: VistaPrint
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You might also enjoy:
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Startup Myths – I shall not be fooled again by gurus
+ Startup Weekend: How to prepare? (Day 0)
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
Where to next? Check out a random article.
Stay in touch: Check us out via RSS Feed, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.
Join the conversation: Leave a comment or tweet this post.
Helpful Startup Tools for Entrepreneurs – Q&As
In early August we published a post titled “Helpful Startup Tools for Entrepreneurs“. It announced our new repository of online startup tools for entrepreneurs.
Today we have added 10 top question/answer websites. We are big fans of online expert sites. These platforms allow you to gain access to industry experts.
Want to ask Eric Ries a question on Lean Startup? Check out Sprouter. Want to ask Drew Houston about how he started to Dropbox? Check our Quora.
Here are the 10 new entires into the startup tools repository:
1. Quora – Using the search functionality you can easily find experts and answers relevant to your industry.
2. Askolo – A small scale question and answer website, however has a diverse membership base of startup entrepreneurs. Offers an opportunity to get in touch with like minded people.
3. Stack Exchange- It originated from helping programmers solve coding problems. It is now an ever growing pure question and answer site.
4. OnStartups – Part of the StackExchange network. This section deals specifically with entrepreneur and startup based questions.
5. Sporuter – A rich community of startup experts. Includes answers from Eric Ries, Brad Feld, Tony Conrad, Dan Martell, Mark Suster, Hiten Shah, Micah Baldwin, Aaron Patzer, Daniel Burka, Joe Stump, Ash Maurya.
6. LinkedIn – Best known for being a social network for professional connections, LinkedIn offers several forums for connecting with experts in your field.
7. Reddit – The social news website has slowly been adding subsections (“subreddits”). This has helped in finding useful users and threads to follow.
8. Hacker News – Affiliated with the YCombinator accelerator foudned by Paul Graham. The site is primarily a news aggregation site for startup and technology related articles. However submissions prefixed with “Ask HN” or “Show HN” can quickly gain useful feedback and interest.
9. Twitter – Search and find experts to follow and ask questions. Your submissions are limited to 140 characters but can start informative interactions.
10. Google – It is very likely your question has already been asked (and answered). Searching for “How do I…” may yield some quick answers.
Want more top tools? Visit our Helpful Startup Tools For Entrepreneurs section.
Have a site to add? Drop us a line in the comments section or over Twitter.
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You might also enjoy:
+ The Top 100 UK Startups (2010)
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Samsung’s Pivot From Dried Fish to Smartphones
+ Top Startup Podcasts – Learning From Listening
+ Helpful Startup Tools For Entrepreneurs
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
Where to next? Check out a random article.
Stay in touch: Check us out via RSS Feed, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.
Join the conversation: Leave a comment or tweet this post.
Helpful Startup Tools for Entrepreneurs
Today we have added a new section to the Spark n Launch blog titled ‘Top Startup Tools‘.
The page contains lists of helpful startup tools for entrepreneurs. We will continue to add to this page as we find more and more great online resources. Currently we are adding to the below categories. Have we missed something? Drop us a line with your own favourite entrepreneur tools.
Top Startup Podcasts
Top Startup Coding Resources
Top Startup Q&As
Top Startup Business Planning Tools
Top Startup Blogs
Also, don’t forget our Startups Buzzwords Glossary (or Startups Dictionary), an explanation of some of those frequently heard startup buzzwords.
Peace out!
Image Credit: Shutterstock
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You might also enjoy:
+ The Top 100 UK Startups (2010)
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Samsung’s Pivot From Dried Fish to Smartphones
+ Top Startup Podcasts – Learning From Listening
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
Where to next? Check out a random article.
Stay in touch: Check us out via RSS Feed, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.
Join the conversation: Leave a comment or tweet this post.
How To Get Traction? Or Why Is My Startup Broken?
The Mystery of Achieving Exponential Growth
tl;dr This post looks at how startups gain their initial traction. By studying previous successful startups (like Quora, Mint, Airbnb, Twitter, Facebook, Groupon) we realise that clever mass marketing techniques; and targeting niche markets are the real reason many grew so quickly. Going viral is harder than it looks.
The Problem With Your Startup
You’ve thought of the great idea, conducted various forms of customer validation, recruited your technical co-founder, pivoted twice and finally launched your Minimal Viable Product (MVP). Awesome! You are on the verge of making the headlines and dollars. You and your co-founder stare at the web analytics screen waiting for lift off… Something must be broken. You check your Internet connection and click refresh. You ask yourselves why no one is visiting your site? Why is no one buying our product?
The common question of gaining initiation traction is challenging one. Challenging because it fundamentally questions your business model. Going live or launching is the ultimate validation test. Did we build the right thing? Does anyone want our product?
Marketers are quick to advise you to “improve your SEO”, “interact on key social media” or “buy adwords”. Consultants will tell you to “revisit your business model” or “redraw your lean canvas”. While you appreciate their helpfulness, this advice doesn’t always translate to your business case or doesn’t actually work in reality.
How To Get Traction?
When in doubt, look back in time. While not the most reliable tool (history), it may well help you make your next intelligent step forward. Or it just proves that the big names of today faced a similar uphill battle.
Quora has endless questions on gaining traction. Enough to justify the section titled: How Did X Get Traction? Here is a selection of some of our favourite initial traction startup stories.
1. How did Quora get its initial traction?
Adam D’Angelo (Quora Founder) puts it simply: “We invited our friends, and some of them invited their friends, etc.” However this was back in 2010 and the site has evolved dramatically since then. A common thread for many startups is encouraging content creation. Sites that can encourage users to create content retains existing users and attracts new users.
2. How did Mint get initial traction?
Mint insiders go into detail of how they built their user base. Apart from having a great brand that solved a real problem, they leveraged a strong PR and marketing strategy that reaped high quality traffic.
A sweet domain name also helps, but usually comes at a price. Mint supposedly paid $2 million for the four letter address.
3. How did Airbnb get initial traction?
Solve a problem with a crazy idea. In 2007 San Francisco hotels were booked out. The buddying entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to rent out their floor space by throwing an “air” mattress. The concept blew up.
Dave Gooden suggests a rather more sinister approach to gaining traction. He describes a sophisticated mailing campaign via Craiglist.
4. How did LinkedIn get its initial traction?
Lee Hower (LinkedIn Founding Team) boasts impressive growth in users. Within 12 months they claimed 500,000 users!
We are doubtful of good luck and timing however… some claim the uniqueness of their product at that time explained the success.
Others suggest clever news article placements in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes Magazine helped gain attention.
5. How did plentyoffish get its initial traction?
A decade ago dating websites became the ultimate place to find your next partner. Many competitors appeared but Plenty of Fish remained in top spot.
The reason behind this success is likely to be Markus Frind’s (founder) smart approach to SEO and Google AdSense. His blog post describes the sites exponential growth.
6. How did Facebook gain its initial traction?
We’ve all followed the news stories and seen the film (“The Social Network“). Was it really down to the determination of one computer programming genius?
The early traction appears to have come collecting e-mail addresses of schools and students. The Facebook leveraged the network effect of well connected groups to gain traction.
They offered an attractive option for networks of schools and students to stay connected. As these networks already existed, they simply moved this targeted niche from older and isolated networks to the newer platform.
7. How did StumbleUpon gain its initial traction?
According to Brad O’Neill (First Angel Investor and Advisor) Stumbleupon was one of the very first add-ons to the Firefox browser. This early relationship helped Stumbleupon grow a significant userbase, as the functionality was integrated into their browsing.
Stumbleupon was one of five or six product ideas the original founders had considered.
8. How did Twitter get initial traction?
The tipping point for Twitter appears to be its showcase at the 2007 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. Twitter displayed festival goers messages on large screens around the event.
However before this time, it is likely that the early adopters and a large network of bloggers did their part to spread the word.
9. How did Foursquare get initial traction?
One view is that a launch at 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) kicked off their growth. Another view is that a city-by-city approach expanded as new users were added. By pushing growth in cities, a combination of city level growth and national growth promoted adoption.
However was it their prior experience with location based technology that triggered their real growth? Dennis Crowley (Founder) several years earlier had developed and sold a similar concept to Google (now Google Latitude).
10. How did Groupon get initial traction?
Groupon began life as the ThePoint, a community campaign site. It was only several iterations later that a simple experiment for pizza coupons on a WordPress blog validated their coupon based model. Or was it?
Andrew Chen suggests a more sinister strategy of realising a “temporary arbitrage in buying tons of demographically targeted ad inventory”. Groupon essentially leveraged a low cost of customer acquisition by buying up massive subscriber lists and then targeting them with marketing messages. The cost of acquisition quickly rose but by then Groupon had a large enough pool of customers.
Conclusions
It appears plenty of mystery exists around gaining early traction. However based on the above analysis, these top tips may help you gain your early traction:
+ Encourage content creation
+ Get a sweet four letter domain name
+ Build a sophisticated mailing campaign
+ Get published in a newspaper article read by your target market
+ Get the most out of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
+ Utilise the network effect
+ Be the first and be integrated into a daily tool (eg be that button on the top of every web browser)
+ Use early adopters and bloggers to promote your brand
+ Leverage prior experience (and networks)
+ Find a low cost of customer acquisition before others do
If you wish to share your own experiences drop us a line or leave a comment or join the Hacker News discussion.
Image Credit: Let A Thousand Nations
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You might also enjoy:
+ Need Startup Advice? – Just Ask Online
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Samsung’s Pivot From Dried Fish to Smartphones
+ Top Startup Podcasts – Learning From Listening
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
Where to next? Check out a random article.
Stay in touch: Check us out via RSS Feed, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.
Join the conversation: Leave a comment or tweet this post.
Jason Calacanis talks to Alex Tew of Calm.com
Jason Calacanis (right) talks to Alex Tew of Calm.com
tl;dr Alex Tew created the unforgettable Million Dollar Homepage at age 21. He is now working on Calm.com to help people reduce stress. He plans to build a strong brand online, gradually moving into an offline wellness business.
In 2005 at the age of 21, Alex Tew launched the The Million Dollar Homepage. The home page consists of a million pixels arranged in a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid. A 10 × 10 block sold for US$1 each. It was a genius idea at the time that launched Alex in the world of web startups.
Alex and co-founder Michael Acton Smith (of Mind Candy and Moshi Monsters) are now working on a new project called Calm.com to help people reduce stress. He spoke with Jason Calacanis on the always interesting This Week In Startups (TWIST) podcast.
(Check out our list of top startup podcasts.)
Jason loved the concept and the brand, keen to jump on board as the startup’s first investor. Jason seemed impressed by the fact the company has managed to score a lucrative four letter domain name. (Alex does not disclose the price paid but hints towards a high end five figure number.) “Calm” is definitely a clear and concise brand name.
The interview is worth checking out to hear the proposed business model – one of which is building a web based business that will eventually grow into an off line “wellness” company.
Will it work? Who knows? Good luck to Alex and Michael.
More information at their Angel List page.
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You might also enjoy:
+ The Startup Dictionary – Learning the Lingo #3
+ Learning From Other Startups – 6 Real Life Stories
+ Samsung’s Pivot From Dried Fish to Smartphones
+ Top Startup Podcasts – Learning From Listening
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
Where to next? Check out a random article.
Stay in touch: Check us out via RSS Feed, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.
Join the conversation: Leave a comment or tweet this post.
The London Olympics 2012 (In Infographics)
The 2012 Summer Olympic Games are less than a week away and excitement is building for the biggest sporting event on the planet. With 26 sports, 10,500 athletes and millions of spectators the numbers are mind boggling. Fortunately the creative folk have simplified the figures into pretty infographics. (Information graphics are visual representations of information, data or knowledge.)
Here are some of our favourites. Drop us a line on Twitter if you find any other Olympic infographcs.
1. Time Out Magazine – The Games by tickets, athletes and torch bearers…
2. Schweppes Abbey Well – The drinks company dives into the Summer Games in terms of liquids…
3. McDonald’s – The sponsorship history of one of the official sponsors…
4. Visa – A breakdown of the estimated economic impact of the Games…
5. Olympic Evolution – The initial games featured 14 nations. Now more than 200 nations compete…
6. New Zealand Herald – Breaking down the all the numbers and statistics surrounding the London 2012 Olympics…
7. Daily Infographic – Shows the evolution of Olympic coverage…
8. Complex – A Design History Of The Olympic Gold Medal…
9. Mashable – How Mobile, Social Will Win the 2012 Olympics…
10. Find Me A Gift – Olympic Events You Won’t See At London 2012…
For more infographics and data visualisations check out the Cool Infographics Blog and Google Maps Mania Blog.
Image Credit: In Graphics’ Flickr Photostream
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You might also enjoy:
+ April Fools Day – Some of Our Favourites
+ Friday 13th – 3 interesting facts
+ Happy New Years – Bring on 2012!
Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, you might want to start with a new article or read through our older submissions.
Where to next? Check out a random article.
Stay in touch: Check us out via RSS Feed, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.
Join the conversation: Leave a comment or tweet this post.
