I recently attended my 6th Ultra Light Startup, where the mission is simple: “Tech entrepreneurs sharing techniques to launch faster and cheaper!”  I’ve covered their recent events including Monetization via Ads,  Outsourcing, SEO/SEM, and last months most popular Open Source CMS. (I made a video of that event and the article itself was picked up by the well know online publisher SmashingMagazine.)

This months meetup tested a completely new format – the Revenue Model Workshop. At this event, 5 startups were selected to give brief presentations of their business, focusing on their revenue models. It was held at For Your Imagination (special thanks to Kathryn Velvel Jones) in order to support , without a doubt, one of the largest Ultra Light crowds to date.

As usual, the night kicked off with 1 minute elevator pitches by the Ultra Light Audience. This ran pretty smoothly, particularly thanks to Ronald Bradford’s “Entreprenuer Pitch Instructions”. Some of the more impressive and eyecatching companies included:

• Groupable.com by Nate Brochin: Group Sponsorship Exchange
• BabyNameWizard by Jennie Baird: Baby Naming Expert Wizard
• ProperCloth by Seph Skerritt: Custom Dress Shirts via Online

Following the quick pitch session, guest speaker Derek Lee wowed the audience with his  “Immodest Proposal”…STOP CREATING AD INVENTORY (write up by Sanford Dickert)

• The long tail is dead.
• You will not feed your family or pay the mortgage with google Ad Words
• Figure out your economic value per customer instead of ad impressions
• Remember the difference between branded advertising and direct response – note that Lawn Doctor was on the prime time CNN show
• Sell something – unlimited ad inventory is nothing
• West Coast Model is what everyone is chasing – build a big community of 4M members and then monetize it. The darlings of the current economic world will disappear.
• East Coast Model is making money – figure out your revenue model – $ for one customer, $$ for more than one, then $$$$ for lots. Pick a revenue model and build it.
• Don’t get a job now – we are in a recession. In 20 years from now, look at the Fortune 100 then and see how many got started in 2009.

It was a lot to take in for the audience and left people hungry for more answers. Good timing, because the pizza arrived shortly after and the networking frenzy began. After 15 minutes of handshakes, business card exchanges and hardcore networking, the panel was seated and ready to go.

As planned, five entrepreneurs had 5 minutes each to pitch their product and revenue models ($$Cha-Ching$$). The panel would then provide helpful alternatives for the entrepreneur to consider as methods to generate more revenue from their business more efficiently. The presenters were as follows…

• John Murch, SEO Drop
• Joshua Russak & Gerrit Hall, RezRedo, LLC. [*video below]
  
• Mor Sela, ProCompare
• Laurent Kretz, CabEasy
• Hermann Mazard, Home Shop and The “Yes We” Can

The panelists included:

• Maisha Walker, President, MessageMedium & Columnist w/ Inc. magazine
• Jay Levy, founding Principal of Zelkova Ventures
• Martin Breslin, Managing Partner, The Hatchery and founder of Fiscvl Corp.
• David Schnurman, President of Lawline.com and CEO of TrueNYC.com
• Steven Adler, CEO of Financial Summit Ventures

Overall the feedback was helpful for the presenters. Each panelist seemed to have their own perspective and advice, but there were times where they were simply “confused” by the ideas presented.  But overall, the event was successful and the presenters walked away with what they needed to improve their business.

I highly suggest you attend next months meetup, Ultra Light Web Analytics, February 5th at For Your Imagination. The panel lined up is strong and based on the growing numbers, this will be a large/networking worthy venue.

**In order to give you an idea of what it was like to present, I have decided to sacrifice my video for the sake for your viewing pleasure:

Posted under Events, Ultra Light Startups

I was recently invited to present in front of a panel at the Ultra Light Startups in January. I’ve been to these meetups in the past (ie Open Source CMS),  but this is one is different. I’ve been selected among 5 other presenters to the Revenue Model Workshop. At this event they selected 5 startups to give a brief presentation of their business, focusing on their revenue model. A panel of experts will provide insights, suggestions, and helpful alternatives for the entrepreneur to consider as methods to generate more revenue from their business more efficiently.

This is a great chance for me to learn how to monetize it RezRedo.com (advertisement to the left of this blog). VC Fred Wilson said on his blog, “Most web apps will be monetized with some kind of media model. Don’t think banner ads when I say that. Think of all the various ways that an audience that is paying attention to your service can be paid for by companies and people who want some of that attention.” The question is which model to choose?

Chris Anderson of Wired.com, put together a strong Media Business Model list of revenue models you can find in the media industry, all based around a core of free or almost-free content:

• CPM ads (“cost per thousand views”; banner ads online and regular ads in print, TV and radio)
• CPC ads (“cost per click”; think Google ads)
• CPA ads (“cost per action”; pay only if the customer performs a certain action)
• CPT ads (“cost per transaction”; you pay only if the customer brought to you from a media sites becomes a paying customer.)
• Lead generation (you pay for qualified names of potential customers)
• Subscription revenues
• Affiliate revenues (think: Amazon Associates)
• Rental of subscriber lists
• Sale of information (selling data about users–aggregate/statistical or individual–to third parties)
• Licensing of brand (people pay to use a media brand as implied endorsement)
• Licensing of content (syndication)
• Getting the users to create something of value for free and applying any of the above to monetize it. (Like Digg or our own Reddit)
• Upgraded service/content (ed: aka “freemium”)
• Alternate output (pdf; print/print-on-demand; customized Shared Book style; etc.)
• Custom services/feeds
• Live events
• “Souvenirs”/”Merchandise”
• Co-branded spinoff
• Cost Per Install (popular with top Facebook apps who can help others get installs)
• E-commerce (selling stuff directly on your website)
• Sponsorships (ads of some sort that are sold based on time, not on the number of impressions)
• Listings (paying a time based amount to list something like a job or real estate on your website)
• Paid Inclusion (a form of CPC advertising where an advertiser pays to be included in a search result)
• Streaming Audio Advertising (like radio advertising delivered in the audio stream after a certain amount of audio content has been delivered)
• Streaming Video Advertising (like streaming audio but in video)
• API Fees (charging third parties to access your API)

A lot of your revenue model choices depend on B2B vs. B2C. Some work for both, while others are particular to the type of regular transactions that will be taking place. At this point, I have narrowed down my choices based off of this list and I hope this helped you do the same.

Posted under Events, Online Marketing, Social Networks, Ultra Light Startups, Viral Marketing

I recently attended my 5th Ultra Light Startups and as expected, it was a success!  I have covered their recent event topics including Monetization via Ads, then Outsourcing, & last months SEO/SEM. But this months topic was highly controversial: Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS). Topics included:

• The most popular Open Source CMS’s – Drupal, Joomla & WordPress.
• Examples of successfull startups on each platform.
• What are the main differentiators between the platform.

For those of you unaware of this event, the mission is simple: “Tech entrepreneurs, sharing techniques to launch faster and cheaper!” It is a great source of networking with a panel also included to help drive engaging/helpful discussions to improve your startup.

As usual, the night kicked off with 1 minute elevator pitches by the event participants. Rami Weiss of Boomerater.com, explained why this was so crucial: “Pitching is important and practicing your pitch is the only way to perfect it!” (His tips included: Stand Up, Explain What you do, Your Business Model, Funding, Size and Other Stats). There were a lot of web-design and CMS design companies present, but a a few stood out from the crowd.

• Jason Calderon, BrandYourBaby.com – Child naming and website apps
• Benjamin Horst, Wishler.com -Social wishlist sharing site
• Michael Meyers, NowPublic – NextGen “Reuters”/1st VC’ed Co. using Drupal.
• Peter Raymond, Human Condition – Feel what a disease feels like…
• Joshua Russak (Me), RezRedo.com – Database of Resume Job Experiences
• Boris Bulayev, Educate – Educating Africa’s Future Leaders

Also, a last-minute addition, the creator of the website Overheard In New York, Morgan Friedman, talked about how he achieved success with his ‘ultra light’ startup. The best advice he gave came from his Rabbi: “Any problem that can be solved by money isn’t actually a problem”. Following his speech, came pizza+pop+networking which is a core to this event. After a 1/2 hour of business card collection the panelists took their seats. The panelists were as follows:

• Vishy Venugopalan (moderator) , The 451 Group.
• Steve Bruner – Founder/CEO, SlipFire; Organizer of NY WordPress Meetup.
• Ezra Gildesgame – Drupal contributor;Co-author Drupal in Action.
• Donna Vincent – Principal, JoomSites, LLC; Maintains NYC Joomla Group.

In the past, I covered the events in a Q&A format on my blog, but I decided to try a new form of event coverage: Flip Video! First suggested to me by Melissa Salas (Director of Marketing, Buy.com, met her at Affiliate Summit Social 2008), the Flip is a great way to quickly video-capture events and easily upload them 1-2-3 to social video networks. So…instead of taking notes at this event…I put a fun little video together. Questions covered in the video include:”Describe your CMS…“,”Examples of websites that use your CMS“, “CMS Developer Communities“, “What’s next?” and more…

If you liked what you read here, come out to next months Ultra Light Startup Event: Startup Revenue Models. I look forward to seeing you there.

Posted under Events, Ultra Light Startups

SearchEngineLand recently published “a list of things that small businesses can be thankful for — one for each letter of the alphabet — this Thanksgiving. These are things that can make the difficult challenge of online marketing a little easier for any small business.” I’ve went through the list and find it a great resource for small business owners. You can find the exact list, word-for-word (as found on SEL’s blog) below:

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A: Analytics – It wasn’t too long ago that a full-featured analytics package was out of budgetary reach for a lot of small businesses. But thanks to Google Analytics (and, hopefully, Yahoo Web Analytics when it launches publicly), small business owners now have access to the type of data that only their deep-pocketed competition could previously afford.

B: Blogs – Have you noticed in my ongoing “Small Business Success Stories” series here on Search Engine Land how often a blog plays a major role in a successful online marketing campaign? Element One Photography, real estate agent Teresa Boardman, and Avante Gardens are just three examples of successful small business blogs.

C: Common Craft – “Explanations in plain English” is the tagline for this video-making company that takes somewhat complicated ideas/services/tools and brings them to the masses. RSS in Plain English is their most popular work so far, and a great primer for small businesses who don’t quite “get” why RSS is so great.

D: DomainTools.com – It’s not the best place to brainstorm domain ideas for your small business, but DomainTools is the best place to do competitive research on domains that have already been registered.

E: Education – From Search Engine Land to Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Guide, and the countless other excellent web marketing sites, getting an online education is pretty easy. Is there another industry in which the best in the business consistently share their wisdom so openly?

F: Firefox – Any small business owner wanting to become a do-it-yourself search marketer can thank the Firefox web browser and its countless plug-ins that put a wealth of SEO data at your fingertips.

G: Geotargeting – There are almost 20 cities named Columbus in the USA. Those dentists in Columbus, Ohio, sure don’t want their ads being clicked on by searchers in Arkansas, North Dakota, and Texas. We overlook it, but the ability to geotarget ads is a real blessing for small business owners.

H: HitTail – It’s not the only analytics-type service you should use, but with almost-real time tracking of sites and keywords that send visitors to your site, HitTail is a great complement to your primary web stats program.

I: iStockphoto – A great photo or image can dramatically improve any piece of content, no matter how well written it is. iStockphoto offers an amazing collection of images, many of which can be purchased for web, blog, e-book, or similar uses for just a couple dollars.

J: Junk Mail Filters – Be glad that you can filter away all those “Submit your web site to 5,000 directories” and “We’ll put you at #1 on Google for $49.95 per month” emails. They’re useless and should be ignored at all costs.

K: Keyword Research Tools – Whether it’s Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, or one of the many others, keyword research tools seem to get more powerful every year while still staying affordable for small business owners.

L: Local Search – All three main search engines offer local search business listings, and countless other local/social directory sites bring value to small businesses, too. Add it all up, and local search is the best way for local businesses to connect with local customers.

M: Matt Cutts – You may not like all of Google’s policies, but give credit where it’s due. Small business owners can be thankful that Matt’s blog offers a direct window into Google’s anti-spam and search quality efforts.

N: Networking – When you start a new small business, the first piece of advice you’ll get is to join the Chamber of Commerce. Why? Networking. It’s how you meet local people who might become customers or business partners and help you grow your business. Small business owners can also network online thanks to social media sites with local networking opportunities.

O: Onebox – Thanks to Google’s local search onebox, a small business now has an extra ten chances to show up on page one of Google’s SERPs.

P: PPC – For many small businesses, there’s no better and faster way to get search engine visibility than a well-planned PPC campaign. Pay-per-click advertising can bring in targeted traffic while you’re waiting out those weeks or months for your SEO campaign to bring results.

Q: Quality Over Quantity – Small businesses can be thankful that, when it comes to content and links and competing in local search, it really is about quality over quantity. With a few exceptions, you probably don’t need to go out and find hundreds or thousands of links; a few high-quality links should be enough.

R: Reviews – No small business owner likes getting bad reviews, but progressive small business owners know that it’s smart to embrace online reviews and encourage happy customers to write reviews. Searchers rely on reviews to make buying decisions, and local search algorithms look at ratings when determining rank order.

S: Social Media – Many small business owners don’t quite understand social media, but there are numerous ways for any small business to succeed with social media.

T: Tools – Using the right SEO toolbox can give any small business a big advantage over the competition. But it’s important to remember that tools can’t make decisions for you; that’s your job.

U: Unleashed – Geared specifically to small business owners, the Small Business Marketing “Unleashed” conference has quickly become a must-attend event for both its educational and networking opportunities.

V: Video – Video used to be something that only Big Companies could afford, but today there are numerous companies bringing affordable video marketing to the small business sector. And with blended search results becoming more widespread, videos can be an effective tool for attracting new traffic and customers.

W: Webmaster Central – It’s not just the tools and data you get from having a Google Webmaster Central account that matters; equally important is the fact that GWC provides a direct line of communication between small businesses and their primary source of natural search traffic. The communication aspect is highly underrated, but something to be very thankful for.

X: Xenu – Give thanks to Xenu Link Sleuth, which advertises itself as a tool for checking broken links, but really provides so much more link information than that.

Y: Yahoo Site Explorer – With Google and MSN both neutering their public link reporting tools, Yahoo Site Explorer offers the best free, straight-from-a-search-engine snapshot of a site’s indexing and inbound links.

Z: Zappos – Any small business that thinks social media, and Twitter especially, are useless as business/marketing tools need only look at what Zappos is doing. They’ve become the poster child for how to connect with customers online.

©2008 Third Door Media, Inc.

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Have a happy thanksgiving and thanks again to SearchEngineLand for providing me with great content and an easy way out of having to blog pre-thanksgiving. For more about SearchEngineLand, check out their parent company ThirdDoorMedia.com, creators of SMX, Sphinn and SearchMarketingNow.

Posted under Blogs, Social Networks, Ultra Light Startups

(*if pictures don’t appear above, click REFRESH on your browser)

I recently attended my 3rd Ultra Light Startups! I covered last months event in my article Ultra Light Startups – Outsourcing Your Startup!! This months Topic was SEO and SEM:

• Principals of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing
• Practical advice for maximizing your S.E.O./S.E.M. investment
• Build vs buy (do-it-yourself vs hire an agency) decision criteria
• Customer testimonials and entrepreneur experiences with S.E.O./S.E.M.

For those of you unaware of this event, the mission is simple: “Tech entrepreneurs, sharing techniques to launch faster and cheaper!” A room full of 50+ Entrepreneurs with bootstrapped budgets discussing professional techniques on improving their businesses. A great source for networking and information. And more importantly, the panel at this event felt a lot more engaging than the big conferences, but the content and material was just as good, if not better!

I was very impressed with the companies presenting this time around. I made a few notes  about the companies I found to be the most intriguing. Web100.com presents top 10 and 100 lists in many different categories and brings in over 125,000 page views per month. The funder and CEO of SlipFire, built a web marketing and design company using wordpress (impressive!). I presented RezRedo.com, the 1st and only database of Resume Job Experiences and overall, it received good reactions. Other noteworthy companies included SEO Tools company SEO Drop, TurboCourt the TurboTax for law, and Boomerator.com the one stop shop and social network for Baby Boomers (I’d like to not that they were recently mentioned TechCrunch and Mashable.com). There were many other great presentation and if you want to see the full list of presenting companies, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Once the networking+pizza 1/2 hour was over, the panel was ready to get going. It consisted of the following:

• Maisha Walker, President, Message Medium & Columnist with Inc. Magazine
• Regau Flowers, SEM Director at Comet Conversion
• Cesar Hervieux, Online media buyer and planner with Media Contacts
• Sara Holoubek, Consultant, Editor at SearchBuzz, & Director of SEMPO
• Joseph McElroy, Search Artist at Gigapixel Creative and Chair of IPTV Committee on Emerging Technolgy (SEMPO)

I usually report on the panel in the following manner: Q & A format, where write the question and provide each panelist’s response below it. It lasted about 1 hour, but here’s the most relevant content I was able to write down:

Q: How do you know you’re SEO campaign was effective/is doing well?

• Sarah: “You’re making money (everybody luaghs)…but note that setting a benchmark is very important”
• Regau: “I need to know your GOAL in the beginning”

Q: Pro’s and Con’s of doing SEM in a Content Management System (CMS)?

• Joseph: “WordPress, Joomla and Drupalare great porgrams. If you’re not going to use a CMS and start from scratch, you better be an expert”

Q: How long until you see results?

• Regau: “It depends on your campaign and goals.”
• Sarah:”As soon as tomorrow to a couple of months. It really depends on Spider Frequency from Google…oh ya, there are other search engines too (everybody laughs). SEO is like PR, where you have to pitch to the editor every day…and the pitch keeps changing.”

Q: SEO Basics?

• Regau: “A huge part is how many sites are ranking in your area! How many site are ranking against you?”
• Sarah: “3 Basics – 1. Make sure a spider can get into your site; 2. Make sure the content is relevant to the text; 3. Internal and External linking.”
• Joseph: “It’s also important for when people get there, what’s going to happen after that?”

Q: What’s the difference in promoting a Product vs. Services?

• Joseph: “You should contentrate more on PPC for Products and SEO for Services.”

Q: How much time should one spend on SEO vs. Social Marketing Optimization (SMO)?

• Regau: “If you’re aiming for the longtail, longer lasting success then SEO…SMO is an ongoing process that needs daily updates.”
• Sarah: “Utilizing social networking sites will be good for Tomorrow’s success…but you have to keep up with it then.”

Overall it was a successfull event and if you’re interested in going, I suggest going to December 4th: Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) to hear from Joomla, Drupal and WordPress experts. It’s a guarantee you’ll find what you’re looking for!

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Full List of Companies That Presented:

Web100	http://www.web100.comt
ServicePlatform.com	http://www.ServicePlatform.com
Multiple-Markets	http://www.multiple-markets.com
Media Contacts	http://www.mediacontacts.com
Wanderlust Design	http://www.wanderlust-design.com
Straightforward	http://www.sfapparel.com
DesignBuggy	http://www.designbuggy.com
Adulmec LLC	http://www.adulmec.com
ManorTrade	http://www.manortrade.com
Intresys, Inc.	http://www.turbocourt.com
HomeShop Technologies, Inc.	http://www.homeshoptechnologies.com
SEO Drop	http://www.seodrop.com/demo
iPhoneBootCampNYC	http://www.iphonebootcampnyc.com
RezRedo LLC	http://www.rezredo.com
Wale Up	http://waleup.com
College Mogul	http://collegemogul.com
Boomerater	http://www.boomerater.com
MyBandShare	http://www.mybandshare.com
Good Health Advertising	http://www.goodhealthadvertising.com
42SQL	http://42sql.com
ScheduleMonkey	http://www.ScheduleMonkey.com
Adulmec LLC	http://www.Adulmec.com
SlipFire	http://www.slipfire.com
Oursoko.com	http://www.oursoko.com
MetaNirvana	http://www.metanirvana.com
Genesis International Corp	http://www.genesis-int-corp.com
Seamless Outsourcing Inc.	http://www.seamlessoutsourcing.com/

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Posted under Events, SEO/SEM, Ultra Light Startups