Archives for May, 2008
15 Startup Commandments
Hi,
I just recently joined facebook, and found very nice commandments for startups there. Can’t stop myself for putting in my online diary(this blog) and share further.
+15 Startup Commandments
1. Your idea isn’t new. Pick an idea; at least 50 other people have thought of it. Get over your stunning brilliance and realize that execution matters more.
2. Stealth startups suck. You’re not working on the Manhattan Project, Einstein. Get something out as quickly as possible and promote the hell out of it.
3. If you don’t have scaling problems, you’re not growing fast enough.
4. If you’re successful, people will try to take advantage of you. Hope that you’re in that position, and hope that you’re smart enough to not fall for it.
5. People will tell you they know more than you do. If that’s really the case, you shouldn’t be doing your startup.
6. Your competition will inflate their numbers. Take any startup traffic number and slash it in half. At least.
7. Perfection is the enemy of good enough. Leonardo could paint the Mona Lisa only once. You, Bob Ross, can push a bug release every 5 minutes because you were at least smart enough to do a web app.
8. The size of your startup is not a reflection of your manhood. More employees does not make you more of a man (or woman as the case may be).
9. You don’t need business development people. If you’re successful, companies will come to you. The deals will still be distractions and not worth doing, but at least you’re not spending any effort trying to get them.
10. You have to be wrong in the head to start a company. But we have all the fun.
11. Starting a company will teach you what it’s like to be a manic depressive. They, at least, can take medication.
12. Your startup isn’t succeeding? You have two options: go home with your tail between your legs or do something about it. What’s it going to be?
13. If you don’t pay attention to your competition, they will turn out to be geniuses and will crush you. If you do pay attention to them, they will turn out to be idiots and you will have wasted your time. Which would you prefer?
14. Startups are not a democracy. Want a democracy? Go run for class president, Bueller.
15. You’re doing a web app, right? This isn’t the 1980s. Your crummy, half-assed web app will still be more successful than your competitor’s most polished software application.
Sphere: Related ContentSave and Organize Search Results
Saving Search results based on topic or keywords
Millions of people on internet use Search Engines every day. Some time it might be a quick search engine visit. Like you search for particular company web site or meaning of a word and you are done. But what about any other cases where the user keeps searching on some particular topic and find some scattered information
Now a days Google Search And Microsoft Live Search provides APIs to fetch search results. That can enable a developer to build an application which just acts like a search engine, but also lets the user save and organize the search results.
Further, Live alerts API can be used to attach a search result to an alert so that the alert can remind you of that search result at some particular point of time in future.
This can be really helpful to many people who want to save particular search results. And this can help you earn ads money.
Sphere: Related ContentProgrammers can build unavailable components
Yes, Just build Components, UI, Controls, Web Sites based out of very famous Softwares or Services. If you can provide a solution to few people’s problem and make something available it should fetch you what you are looking for…
For example, The most famous IIS Web Server on Windows Platform does not provide cronjobs kind of functionality. So, .NET developers can build such implementation and can sell it on their web site for few bucks.
There is already a huge user base who have thier ASP .NET hosting on shared hosting space and would be helped with this functionality.
There might be few components or functionality that are available on PHP based CMS but such functionality is not widely available on .NET based CMS. You can choose to implement such things and once the word is spread, you will have orders in your database!!!
Sphere: Related ContentHosted CMS with DotNetNuke or eZPublish Hosting
There are lot of open source and free CMS web applications available to download and install on the web server. One of the best in Microsoft .NET technology is DotNetNuke and the best one in PHP technology is eZ Publish. These CMS applications like DotNetNuke and eZ Publish let you run many web sites with different UI run from single installation. And that’s the key. All the web sites will get basic functionality modules like Forums, File Management, Skinning, Events, Announcements, Articles, Contact Us and many other by default.
If we assume your web site is called hostedwebcms.net(fictious), the subscriber’s web site would be called subscriberselectedname.hostedwebcms.net or hostedwebcms.net/subscriberselectedname.
If you are a tech geek yourself or you can hire one geek to manage one of this CMS for you, you can launch a hosted CMS service. Install one of these web application ( e.g. DotNetNuke or eZ Publish) and let users create their web sites on top of it.
In terms of Business or money making there are 2 modes you can run this web application in. 1) Paid Subscription 2) Free
1) Paid Hosted CMS Service
That’s pretty straight forward that you install the application on your server and let users create web site on top of it and change them to have this site created and hosted monthly or yearly.
2) Free Hosted CMS Service
Again the technical requirements remains the same but you would generate revenue through advertisements on your web application. So, whenever your subscribers(customers) or their web site visitors are on the web server, they see these advertisements.
The Advertisements can come from various sources. One of them is Google AdSense. You can also try and find various vendors in the same technology and services to be their affiliate and place their links on your site to earn affiliate revenue. You can also have direct contact clients to place their banners on your application.
What needs to be setup to get this going?
Whichever CMS you may use, but it needs to support multiple sites in the same single installation.
Need to have a functionality/page, where user can register onto your CMS and create a new web site.
The user becomes the administrator of his part of the web site. It’s upto you to restrict some particular functionality access. You may choose to provide skinning functionality, but that needs to be secure enough so that the subscriber can not steal data from your database by uploading any files as part of his skin files.
You may like to turn off few features which you are not sure whether they can breach security or not.
We have to take care of web site policies and rules and regulations on the site. For example, you may like to continuously moderate the kind of web sites being created on your hosted space.
There you go, you are all set as such.
Few tips:
Find a good web host(a dedicated server is recommended for such kind of service), but we should be looking for high amount of bandwidth and database space etc.
Always make sure about security by investigating every feature that you are allowing on your web site.
We should try to make things automated as much as possible but moderation is a good practice for certain actions.
If you are a tech geek and have time to look after all of this operation, that’s cool. Otherwise, It is highly recommended to have a software professional look after this hosted CMS installation at least for part-time basis.
I hope these notes helps. Any questions are most welcome. And any corrections or updates are higly appreciated.
Sphere: Related ContentBusiness on the Web - All Ideas
Hey,
I’m creating this main category on this web site i.e. Business Ideas. That’s what site is all about. I want to write out about any business idea which can launch a web site and earn out of it on the web, 24×7 even when you’re on online! Rest of the categories are just support categories which would talk about various revenue streams and web techniques like web development and attracting traffic to web site etc.
The Business Ideas are going to be based out of various personal interests stuff or based on skillsets in different industries or about something a worker in particular industry needs to do very often and that can be provided as online service.
The most important thing will be the valuable “comments” of yours. You can either encourage the idea and fuel it with your comments or you can destroy it with reasons why it can’t just work.
Sphere: Related Content