But just going on Adwords, putting together a text ad or two, selecting a few keywords and sitting back is not going to work.  Adwords is a complex system to get results from.  And once you’ve tuned it to get good results, you have to keep tuning your keywords, bids, and ads to keep them performing.  Adwords in itself could be a part or full-time job for companies with many products (an therefore multiple ads and keyword sets to manage).

A good article to get an excellent handle on this is in the book The Web Startup Success Guide.  In the chapter “Money: Raise, Manage, Make”, the author (Bob Walsh) interviews Dave Collins, Founder of Software Promotions, which focuses on the “arcane arts” of AdWords, search engine optimization, and web analytics for small software companies.  The point that sums it up:

I’d say the single most important fact, if you like, or point that should be behind every decision is that the whole AdWords system is set up for Google. It’s a very obvious and very simplistic statement, that every aspect of the system is set up and geared heavily toward Google and their priorities.
There’s an obvious overlap of priorities, and, for some matters, what’s good for Google is good for you. But there are also a lot of times when you could be spending money on, for instance, keywords that aren’t really relevant. Google is happy, and you are not.

So the key thing is, go with your eyes open, and understand that the system is not set up to be your friend, to be on your side at all.

Doesn’t that make you feel better?

Getting Started

So when you jump in to Adwords, one of the first things you’ll be doing is brainstorming keywords that match your product or service.  The keywords you choose should have a decent chance of someone searching for them.  If not, Google will warn you that search volume for your keywords are low.  Here are some excellent third party services that help you find good keywords in your industry:

• Wordtracker.com
• Keyworddiscovery.com

Each of these are a bit spendy but in the long run will help you make a lot more money with better ads.

For phrases you are using as keywords, like “gold-plated belt buckle” I recommend setting phrases as “phrase match”.  This will find them in any combination, and is less expensive than the default “broad match”.  Set this by clicking the keywords in the keyword interface:

Cost per Click

For each keyword or phrase you’ll have to come up with how much to spend per click.  This is the dance you will dance with Google and Google always leads.  You are bidding against other advertisers for those same keywords.  Google will try to point you in the right direction and tell you when you’re bidding too low, and will recommend a bid price to get “first page” placement, but it’s still hard to know if you’re paying too much.  I’m sure there are books on this.  People get paid to do this bidding for a living, you know.

There is also the content network where your ads can show if you choose.  This is not search results.  Your ads will show up in the Adsense widget on publisher’s sites.  I recommend creating another campaign just for the content network and setting those per-click amounts lower, since they will provide good traffic but of lower quality.

Crafting Ads

Good Adwords ads tend to have a few things in common.  They tend to capitalize the first letter of each word (“Voted #1 In Customer Satisfaction”) (Google recommends it too), the price is listed for the service advertised (“only $19.95”), and the ads attempt to get your attention.

Making good ads involves a bit of trial and error.  The nice thing is that with Adwords reporting, you’ll be able to discern which of your ads are under-performing.

Landing Pages

Landing pages are where the customer will go once they click the ad and hit your site.  The most common advice is to not send users to your home page.  Make a set of special web pages that each target a special selling point that your ad is selling them on.  Make the landing page match the words and tone of the ad.  One approach that you’ve probably seen is where the landing page matches your search exactly.  This is done by passing through keywords in the URL.  Then on the landing page you can dynamically generate a title.

What I like to do is make landing pages, and then make sure they are searchable.  So make sure there you can get to your landing pages by clicking links from your homepage.  That’s how the search engines will find them.  Then your landing pages can be found by people searching for keywords on your landing pages.  If they can find you that way, it saves you advertising money.

Call to Action

Once a user hits a landing page and reads all about your wonderful service, give them a direct path to buy.  You need a “call to action” on your landing pages. Place a big signup button, “buy now” button or signup form on the landing page which leads them to the next step.  Don’t leave ‘em hangin’.

Isn’t There an Easier Way?

Yes! There are now services like Trada which will manage your search advertising campaigns for you, not just on Google, but Yahoo and Bing also.  Trada leverages a huge pool of search optimizers (humans) that come up with a wide variety of keywords and then they create your ads, manage keywords, and monitor performance.

The video above is an interview with Trada CEO Niel Robertson on This Week in Startups.  Look at that great hair.

Trada claims averages of 25 optimizers, 6200 keywords, and over 100 ads per campaign.  Here’s a short intro video:

Next post: interview with Ryan Sit of PicClick

Nowadays, PCI Compliance is the boss.  If you store or transmit credit card information in your organization or site, you will have to conform to the PCI DSS rules in order to do business.

The PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) program was created by the major credit card companies to reduce credit card fraud and enforce a standard level of security.

Why should I care?

Because if you don’t get compliant they won’t do business with you, and you won’t be able to accept credit cards anymore.

From the PCI site:

The payment brands may, at their discretion, fine an acquiring bank $5,000 to $100,000 per month for PCI compliance violations. The banks will most likely pass this fine on downstream till it eventually hits the merchant. Furthermore, the bank will also most likely either terminate your relationship or increase transaction fees.  Penalties are not openly discussed nor widely publicized, but they can catastrophic to a small business.

It is important to be familiar with your merchant account agreement, which should outline your exposure.

What are my choices?

If you need to handle, store, or transmit credit cards, like many businesses that handle sales over the phone or operate an online store, then follow the PCI guidelines.  Here’s the PCI Quick Reference Guide.

On the other hand, if you don’t mind using a third party payment processor, you can let them go through the PCI compliance and just use their service.  Here are a few:

• PayPal
• Amazon Payments
• Google Checkout
• iPortis
• Zuora
• Recurly
• Spreedly
• Chargify
• Cheddargetter
• Braintree
• Stripe
• PaySimple

I’ve only used the top two.  I’ll be checking out the rest in order to improve payment options.  Be looking for that later, and if you end up using a good payments provider (one-time and recurring payments) let me know in a comment below.

Update (Nov. 6th, 2011): I’m working on a comparison of most the above from the viewpoint of a bootstrapped company. Will post link here when done.

I have to do the PCI thing.  How do I do it?

The good news is that the PCI SSC does not consider all organizations the same, so how deep your responsibilities run (your validation level) depends on the number of your transactions annually. To determine your validation level, read this brief Q & A.

Since many new startups will be in Level 4 for quite a while, I included this brief info about Level 4.  Level 4, which is defined as performing less than 20,000 transactions per year, must:

• complete an annual Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ),
• pass a quarterly vulnerability scan on your website and other public computers, and
• complete an Attestation of Compliance. 

The SAQ is long and thorough, but does help you to identify where your organization may be lacking.

The security scans can be a little expensive and in some cases could bring your server to its knees since it scans for thousands of known vulnerabilities. Many services bill on a yearly basis.  Here’s a list of the approved scanning vendors.

In Closing

My recommendation is to outsource your payment processing, as mentioned above, although that option doesn’t fit all businesses.  PCI Compliance can be a pain, especially for large organizations.  If you need to get PCI compliant, don’t try to fly under the radar, it’s not worth it.

If anything above is incorrect, please comment below and I’ll post an update.

Next post: finding a startup co-founder

I discovered Earth Class Mail.  They offer a service that gives you a new mailing address, and any mail arriving at that address is automatically opened, scanned, and available for you to read/shred online.  It’s a fine service for constant travelers, recreational vehicle users, and others who are always on the go.  No need for the neighbors to collect your mail for you.

When I signed up in 2007, the pricing was $9.95/month, and I paid yearly.  But I had to cancel last December because the price had doubled.  The basic plan offered is now $19.95/month.  Here are the pricing details.

You can select an address in one of many large US cities, and you may choose a street addresses or a P.O. Box.  To me, a street address is more conducive to a business address.  Street addresses require an additional fee, based on the city.

You may have seen the company featured on MOJO’s “Start-Up Junkies” where they followed the company and its founder through their journey.

So why did I cancel?

I had come out of stealth, and my customers knew that I wasn’t a big company, so even though an address would have been nice to have, it wasn’t really needed to keep up the charade.  And over 2 years no one ever sent a letter.  It was nice having that address, though, in case someone needed to send me something.

Next post: why you should never see a credit card

I mentioned yesterday about a service that will record a professional voicemail greeting and phone directory for you.  Today I’ll go over a service that offers professional voice recordings exclusively.

Voice123 (homepage plays audio automatically) was first mentioned to me by Josh Guttman when we were preparing a product demo for Surphace s4 and were in need of a voice-over.  The service offers a wide array of voice actors who offer their dulcet tones to suit almost any purpose: radio ads, product demos, voicemail greetings, commercials, presentations, movie trailers, audiobooks, and more.

Search their talent database by voiced age, gender, languages (61 speak Italian), years of experience, etc.

The pricing depends on the project, but here is a sample of prices from their pricing page:

Something to keep in mind is that that the voice-over talent may charge more if your recording is expected to make you quite a bit of money.  A recording used in a nationwide commercial for a product will likely cost many times more than the same length recording used in a local commercial or voicemail message.

Depending on the voice talent, you may need to pay partially in advance, but in many cases you’ll pay on delivery of the final product.

Quote from Josh:

Voice123 is a great app for voice casting.  A niche market but extremely helpful and easy-to-use tool.

Stealth tip: If you want to hide your voice for a demo (I did this) it’s a good way to go.  It’s much better than using an audio tool to change the pitch of your voice (like I did – ugh).

Next post: rolling out your server

When I went through 99Designs to get the logo for Startup Next Door, in my proposal I requested that the designers either provide a vector image or a layered PSD with a large DPI (at least 300). By requesting one fo these formats, I can be assured that I can use the image on large-format printing like banners and t-shirts.

Vector Images

A vector image is an image made up of a group of mathematical formulae, with each line and gradient represented in math. By using a mathematical representation, the image can be regenerated on another computer using math. This also means that the image has no height or width, because the image changes in size by setting a scale number. Because the image looks the same in any size, it can be increased in size for a seminar or trade show banner or scaled down for a business card and keep its fidelity. This is the optimal image format for illustrations such as logos. Adobe Illustrator is the most common creator/viewer of these files and the filenames typically have the .ai extension.

Photoshop Images

Photoshop images (with .psd extension) are typically composed of layers, and each layer can be independently moved or brought to the foreground or sent to the background. A layered image gives you the flexibility to change elements of the image later (such as fonts, shadows, or other details) and keep the rest of the image the same. When a Photoshop file is created, the artist sets the DPI (dots per inch). The larger the DPI, the larger the image can be printed and still look good. Larger DPI also means larger file sizes.

Hope this helps you getting started with your logo the right way. See more here on CafePress about optimizing for large prints.

I will have a shirt coming out soon. I want one for myself even if no one else does

Disclaimer: I’ve been using Photoshop for about 11 years, and am still no expert, although I can create some nice things (like this site). I defer to web design tutorial sites for further info.

Next post: you won’t be alone forever

My Experience

I had heard about 99Designs a while back, and wanted to try it out. When I first researched 99designs, I found a competitor called CrowdSpring. With a little more digging, I found the logo contest for CrowdSpring that was done on 99Designs. CrowdSpring still uses the logo from that contest. Looking around at the current contests, there was even a contest for a new logo for TweetPhoto.

So when the time came to come up with branding and site design for Startup Next Door, I decided to try it. It was a big decision, because the logo was going to drive the look/attitude for the rest of the site. Since I am not a very creative designer, I figured I would leave it to the professionals.

I went through the process of getting signed up and putting my proposal up, and here’s the cost breakdown:

I had originally set up a prize of $250 to attract more designers, but had to drop it to $200 to absorb all the fees.

Writing the proposal was the hardest part, because it involved trying to convey the basic concept of the site and who I am trying to attract (programmers/techies and business people). If you’re a designer and reading this, I have no designer tutorials here because I’m not a designer. That’s why I used the service. I pretty much left the proposal open, since I wanted to see what people would come up with, and not bias their design. I also added the file types I was looking for (vector graphics or layered PSDs). I’ll go into what further specs to include in my next post.

For the first day of the contest I didn’t receive any designs, then on the second day I received one or two, then after that they started rolling in pretty quickly. I had seen the results of other contests, so I knew that sometimes you’ll get text with a nice swirly image next to it, or some bland clipart style graphic that along with text could be put together without too much effort, but I wanted something special, not generic, that when people saw it, it would be instantly recognizable. Over time I was getting worried when nothing seemed to really pop out at me, though some were looking promising. So I took a leap and made the contest Guaranteed (which would force me to choose a winner even if sub-par). I also extended the contest by one day (a free option). Somewhere around day 6 or 7 the logo you see now was submitted and it popped.

Once the contest was over, I chose the winning entry and did the exchange. The designer’s native language was not English, but we were able to communicate enough to sign off and "close" the transaction.

Controversy

Since 99Designs deals with design in a pure market sense, there are some web/logo designers who hate the idea. To them, it cheapens design and the analysis that goes into the branding of a site or product.

When you make a proposal to a design firm, there are many hours of effort put into defining your brand, who it speaks to, and what it says. Those efforts in creating a brand, a logo, website design, and everything ancillary to it is commendable and many times creates beautiful results, and for many businesses seeking professional branding services it’s worth thousands of dollars.

For bootstrapped startups that are trying to spend their money in a way that maximizes each dollar, a professional branding service is too costly. I’m sure a designer will tell me that "you can’t afford not to do this – it’s the most important thing because it defines your business for your customer". A bootstrapped startup can do just fine with a 99Designs or CrowdSpring logo for a while and once they are rolling in money, you (the branding firm) will be called upon to do it up for real. Companies rebrand all the time.

Next post: going big with your logo

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of logo design sites out there. They work in much the same way a web design firm would. You give an idea of the type of design or concept or feeling you want your site to express, and they’ll create one or more designs for you to approve/improve upon. Not bad, but you’re limited to the designs they offer you and the skill of their set of designers.

For logo design, there is a new method that gives you much greater choice. At 99Designs you submit a request (called a contest) for a logo design (or web page design, t-shirt, business card, etc) and a large community of designers creates logos for you, sometimes hundreds of designs. You rate the designs, add comments to help fine-tune the idea, and once the contest is over, choose the winner and receive your design files.

In fact, the logo for this site (see it on the upper left?) was created in one of these contests. The winning designer’s profile is here: http://99designs.com/users/302926

More about how it works

To start a contest, you’ll go through the process of deciding what kind of design contest you need (logo, web design, brochure), and how much you want to pay for a design. Then you’ll create a title and subtitle for you contest. This is where you have to turn on your marketing brain. About 30,000 designers will be scanning the hundreds of contests and you want yours to stand out so you can get as many designs as possible. You’re creating a listing much like on EBay, and you’ll be given opportunities to highlight your listing in different ways for an extra charge. Then you’ll need to write up your proposal, in which you’ll explain the idea or feeling you want the design to evoke. 99Designs has some good advice on how to write an effective proposal. The proposal also will include the file formats you should expect.

Once you submit the proposal and your contest begins, it may take one or two days for anyone to submit a design. This is where you’ll worry. But have no fear, the designs will come. Once they do, you have the opportunity to rate the designs and give feedback to designers. Some of the designs will be laughably bad. And some will make you want to stop the contest immediately and choose them as the winner.

The logo contests run for about 7 days. Once the contest ends, you’ll choose a winner. If none of the designs are acceptable, you have the option to take the prize money and walk away. If you have guaranteed the contest (an option you have once there are many designs submitted), you must choose a winner.

99Designs sets up the exchange, where you accept the files from the designer and get assurances of originality, and the designer gets the prize money. Here are a few links to the help portion of the exchange,

• How to check that the designer’s work is 100% original
• What should I ask the winning designer to provide
• What should I do with my contest once it’s in review

Next post: My experience using 99Designs, and a little controversy (oooh)