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Google Adwords is a force to be reckoned with in the online advertising space. According to IAB Internet Advertising Report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the year 2009, search advertising is 47% of all online advertising efforts, and of this Google has the lion’s share. So when it comes to advertising your startup by being in front of the most people, many agree that Google is your best bet.
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Making money on your site with ads pretty much sucks nowadays. Unless you’re pulling in lots of traffic and your site has a focus or product connection that advertisers can target users to, you’re not going to make very much. In this article I’ll give you some advice on what works and what doesn’t, from my experience.
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When you’re running your own startup and trying to make your product better, it’s tempting to take everything your users say and build it into your product. After all the users are the ones closest to it, right? A user makes a suggestion and you’re more likely than not to add it in.
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I don’t speak much about raising capital at Startup Next Door. For goodness’ sake, the tagline is “Venture without Capital”. But Wednesday night I spoke with a gentleman who had been involved in a few startups (most of them huge), and who has raised funds and is currently raising funds for another ambitious startup. In speaking with him about a business idea and how to raise funds, his advice was to create a story about what you are trying to accomplish, and a part of that story MUST involve making money. That old chestnut – the business model.
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Welcome to the first segment of “Ask Startup Next Door”.
Today’s question: “We’re doing a datacenter move in order to handle more capacity. How much of this should I tell the customers, and to what degree?
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Not all business partners are going to have the same “get it done” attitude that you do. Some will be lazy or get bored with your startup idea. Some will just need to quit for honorable personal reasons, like to take care of health or family. So how do you approach them to take the business out of their hands? Read on.
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I’m a BlackBerry. I’m a phone now, but years ago I was nothing but a glorified pager. I’m all grown up now. I now can make calls, take pictures and video, and utilize GPS and wi-fi.
As a BlackBerry, I’m not as sexy as the iPhone. I don’t have a philosophy that praises aesthetics, and I have way too many buttons compared to an iPhone.
My philosophy is “Let’s get your sh** done”. I’m not made to provide an experience. I’ll help you send an email, listen to a podcast, and fetch updates from Twitter all at the same time, so that you can go have real experiences.
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See this box? It’s the reason you’re here.
Once you click it, you can never go back.
As a newsletter subscriber or “insider”, you’ll get startup opinion and information that won’t be published anytime soon, or maybe ever. You’ll also get beta invitations to upcoming services that will be available on Startup Next Door in the near future.
What are you waiting for? Embrace your destiny and click the button.
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Today we feature an interview with the founders of KnowEm, a rapidly-growing startup that has found great success without venture capital or outside funding.
KnowEm is a brand protection service that allows you to create your brand’s user account on 300 popular social media sites and will not only help you secure your name but they can also show you how to contact each site in order to have the name released and returned to you in the case where someone creates an account in your brand’s name.
KnowEm is headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey and was started by Michael Streko and Barry Wise after a user account-checking website they had been using went offline. They decided to create their own and improved on the concept.
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If your reaction to my last post was “screw you” or words to that effect, and you plan on running a site that will attract large amounts of traffic without a business model, you will 
suffer as Twitter has suffered. But in your case, users will probably never see your cutesy version of the fail whale. Your server will be so busy, backlogged, and exhausted of threads that it will not even be able to serve it. When you get to that point and want to expand to more boxes, it will be constant game of catch-up. Now if you have a good set of servers in the beginning and can see as things get rapidly worse, you’ll be in good shape to get some funding when you boast of your staggering traffic. Some companies aren’t so lucky. In the age of Twitter and Facebook where you’re one famous person’s update away from getting pounded, having the niche as your audience will save you.
