startup hustle

What would you do if your site was stolen and held for ransom? David Airey had built a blog, and more importantly a brand with his website that was also instrumental to his consulting business. Due to a security flaw in Gmail David’s domain name, DavidAirey.com was stolen, and with it all the link and site equity that he had built over the years.

David quickly restructured his blog at davidairey.co.uk, while it is positive, is still lost with all links pointing to the original domain. The original domain is on the first page of Google for the term logo designer (lets try to get the new site there) which is a major achievement. The story quickly flooded the blogosphere and was even picked up by the New York Times.

This story does has a happy ending as Bob Parsons (CEO of GoDaddy) saw the story and helped return davidairey.com back to David (currently being forwarded to davidairey.co.uk).

This is an important alert that you need to back up all your files and databases as well as dont use free email accounts to conduct business.

The Crunchies have picked the top 5 “startups” for each category and are ready for you to vote. What I had feared earlier this month has happened, and worse than I had predicted. I feared that the Crunchies would be a bunch of Silicon Valley startups while other new businesses around the country would not get an equal chance because they were outside the Valley.

The selections were worse because many of the companies (or people) are not startups. Companies like Facebook and Linkedin are in the running. Linkedin, are you kidding me. So instead of picking a real startup from the east coast, the selection committee picks non-startups from the Valley, how original. TechCrunch claims that there were thousands of startups nominated. Out of thousands of choices you still nominated a company that was founded over 4 years ago (Linkedin was founded in 2003 per BusinessWeek).

Allen Stern from CenterNetworks has a good post about his selections and why he picked (or did not pick) a specific company. Mr. Stern also touches on the non-startups being included in the running.

On the other side, TechCrunch can do nothing right in the eyes of their readers. The hate filled comments on every entry is getting old. If I was Arrington I would just close the comments for a week and let the complaining readers have no where to vent.

I have been floating the idea of dabbling in the domain game. As I discuss domaining with fellow entrepreneurs I get the usual talk, it is hyper competitive, all the low hanging fruit is gone…blah. This is a common question many entrepreneurs face when trying to find an industry or idea to attack next, is it too late to in get in?

The majority of entrepreneurs most likely wouldn’t want to tackle the search engine industry. Who would want to compete against Google? If Sergy and Larry had this mindset about Yahoo in the 90′s we wouldn’t have Google. I know the counter argument, for every Google there are 1,000 failed attempts. But what fun is that?

I just read an article about Frank Shilling on DN Journal. If you don’t know Frank, then get ready for a great story. The short version is about a German immigrant in Canada read about the money that could be made selling domains. He got into the domain game 2002, not 1997. Frank was told not to waste his time. All the good domains were gone and the industry was super competitive. So where did Frank end up?

Frank now owns a small company called Name Administration Inc. that has $20 million a year in revenue all from his domain portfolio, and that revenue is not from selling domains. Read Frank’s blog, Seven Mile, if you get a chance.

So the big question is, is it too late to get in?

I’m currently working on an international pay per click campaign for a startup. I turn to Google Trends to get an idea of the search volume in different countries. I don’t take these numbers as 100% correct, but I assume they are in the ballpark. Well, its not in the ballpark, its not even on the same planet. Here is the regional breakdown of search volume for “Keyword” per Google Trends. India has about 85% of the search volume of the US and Canada has roughly 50% the volume.

To test the potential conversion of these international campaigns, I ran a short 3 week test. The international campaigns were replicas of the campaign I run that targets the US market. Each of these campaigns are geotargeted to the specific country (and we all know how well geotargeting works).

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Are you a small business or a startup?

The answer probably depends on where you are located and what industry you are in. The term startup is generally used by tech companies in population hubs like San Fransisco, New York, Boston, LA, Austin that are “in the know”. The term small business is often used by your everyday Joe that is just trying to get something started (most likely out of his home). Home based businesses get a bad rap in the startup world but most companies (especially web companies) are started in a young entrepreneurs apartment (same as home).

Could you image calling some of the Silicon Valley startups home-based businesses? How offensive! Did you know Google started in a garage? Of course you do, everyone does. Why did they start in a garage (of a home = home-based business)? Because it was the most convenient and cost efficient option at the time.

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Most of my friends growing up were artistic and creative, I was not. The one thing I can bring to the table is internet marketing knowledge. When you put that together with a great designer named Gabe Shultz, you get a sketchbook company called Bored Sketchbooks. The site (and idea) was designed by Gabe and the sketchbooks are products of designers from the East Coast to the Midwest.

Each of the 5 designs were limited to 100 prints and are individually numbered. Once the current sketchbook designs are sold, they will not be reprinted (so if you like what you see, buy one soon). The next series of sketchbooks (which can also be used as a notebook or journal) will be released next year.

The BORED site also has an artist gallery section, free graphics to use for whatever you please, and Gabe’s Blog which is usually a documentation of the humorous events in his life.

Visit the site and let me know what you think.

StumbleUpon (SU) is an addictive web application that I can’t stop using. The idea is you add a tool bar on your internet browser that has a button. That one button will keep you occupied for hours. Every time you click the “Stumble!” button, it sends you to a new website. You vote (with the toolbar) if that site is interesting or not. As sites get more positive votes, the more they appear in the stumble process and traffic that site receives. You can set your interests so that you can Stumble sites that have been tagged with your tastes.

StumbleUpon has never had any real competition. Then a new site call Streakr was brought to my attention and was said to be as additive as SU. I downloaded the Streakr tool bar and went into the zone. Streakr allows you to pick which categories you dislike as well as picking your interest. The best part about Streakr is they are more transparent than SU. When you give a site a positive vote, you get forwarded to Streakr and can see the number of positive and negative votes that a page has received. SU does not show you those type of stats.

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Well, of course they will. Early last month I wrote an article on how The Crunchies would be a great source of publicity for a new startup. The nominations have opened for the 20 awards and will close at 12 PST on December 12th. You can nominate any startup if they meet the criteria per the category.

How likely are startups outside the Valley to win one of the Crunchies?

With all the interesting startups in New York, Boston and Chicago and other smaller communities, do they stand a chance in the media hyped bubble of Silicon Valley? I am in no way insinuating that the results will be manipulated, but I know from experience how Silicon Valley media hype can make a big deal of little ideas.

I’m just hoping that a few startups are recognized outside the Valley. Are the chances good? Let me know what you think.

If you research why businesses fail on Google, most of the answers have to do with money management or founder experience issues. These explanations seem to be focused on more traditional brick and mortar (B&M) businesses. Since this blog is written by those with internet business experience, it will focus on why internet businesses fail. The cost to startup and maintain a web business (in comparison to a B&M) is relatively cheap, which leads to multiple issues.

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