On Creating a Startup

Repost: http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/43774/The-5-Minute-Guide-To-Cheap-Startup-Advertising.aspx

I recently advertised my developer's guide to launching a startup on StumbleUpon. The plus side of StumbleUpon is that all clicks are 5 cents. The downside is the bounce rate is high since people are basically channel surfing. I achieved a 96.88% bounce rate in my experiment, with an average stay of 2 seconds. I wonder if it was something I said? In my test, only 25 visitors stayed longer than 5 seconds. I paid $50 for 1000 clicks, but since only 25 of them stayed long enough to read anything, I effectively paid $2 per click. Your mileage may vary, but through this and other experiments I've gathered the following tips for advertising on StumbleUpon:

• Your #1 goal is to get stumblers to stay longer than 5 seconds. Your #2 goal is to get them to up-vote your page. Paying $50 for 1000 clicks is one thing. Having it go viral and receiving 10,000 clicks for the same price is another.
• Don't send StumbleUpon traffic to a landing page that asks for an email address. StumbleUpon users are notoriously fickle about providing their email.
• People stumble to be entertained, so if your page doesn't have the potential to go viral or turn into linkbait, you will not likely fare well.
• Blog-like content and videos seem to work best. Anything that resembles a traditional landing page will bomb.

http://www.winningtheweb.com/reddit-homepage-advertising-results.php

In 24 hours, my listing was shown 26,050 times (to 3,187 unique visitors). The link in my ad was clicked 419 times, resulting in a unique click through rate of 13.15%. Not bad – that’s about $0.09 per click.

http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/80121/How-To-Get-Media-Coverage-For-Your-Startup-A-Complete-Guide.aspx

Timing of your email and Tweets

Timing is also a very important aspect for getting you covered. The best days for traffic for getting coverage of your story I have learnt are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Monday is way too fast to get you written up, the inboxes of reporters are full it's just not a great day.

At the same time, I learnt that, whilst Fridays aren't as good for traffic, the news is slower. So your chances of getting covered on that day can be higher. With a recent story about Buffer on Mashable, I took advantage of this. I followed up on a story I had pitched earlier in the week. Since it was extremely busy, I wouldn't get a response, yet a quick follow up email on Friday would receive an immediate response.

Are you secure

If you ever wondered what could be traced on your person....check out this site.

Click on the little dots in the picture to learn more.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-941262.html

Random Interesting Links

RobinHood.com - 100% Free Stock Trades - no commission....no way, could this be true?

http://www.techhive.com/ - Interesting

http://thewirecutter.com/ - Tech Product Reviews, make sure you buy the good stuff for the right price

https://haveibeenpwned.com/ - See if you have been hit by the Heart Bleed Virus

Click Through Rates and Google Ad-Words

http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/02/11/average-click-through-rate#.
A must read on click through rates and google ad-words, this made a lot of things click for me

Kill a Patent

If your wanting to kill some time, try this. Took me about 10 or 15 min to find a good one.

Ask Patents puts out recent software patents for the public to dispute. You think of an existing software or website that does what the patent says and submit it as prior art.

Poof - The patent is dismissed.

Awesomeness.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2013/07/22.html
How to Read a Patent in 60 Seconds

Thanks for nothing US Airlines!

A rant....

I had a job late year where I flew every other weekend on  a consulting gig. Must have paid upward of $20,000 in airfare. As a "reward" I got 35,000 miles. Yeah for me!!! OR NOT!

I want to take a trip to Vegas, according to Orbitz I can buy a flight cash for $550. Hummm, I guess I'll use those reward miles and save some money. OR NOT!

A flight cost me 60,000 miles. I have the option to buy additional miles. Guess how much 25,000 miles cost....you guessed it....$550.

What a freakin rip-off!

Thanks for nothing US Airways!

Interesting Startups in Charlotte

I like to see IT take off in Charlotte, having said that here are some folks, in no particular order, doing it big in startups in IT in Charlotte (my home town):

Online TV - http://www.dailybalancewithkim.tv/

Data Sharing - http://www.Mytradeabledata.com - Not online yet, but coming soon...maybe

Breathalyzer Phone App - http://www.alcohoot.com/

iOS Factory Floor Apps - http://www.faktory.co/

HR Software - http://canopyssi.com/ - Very Cool site

Connexio Labs - http://www.connexiolabs.com/

eComDash - Inventory Management and Order Fulfillment Software for Multi-Channel Ecommerce Sellers

DataLakes - Datalakes offers a comprehensive Self-Service Big Data Analytics Platform that enables enterprises to make faster accurate data driven decisions for business. (Check out the blog as well)

Dc74 - Data Center Services

BeanStalkData - CRM Applications and B2B or B2C??/ solutions

NexTable - Restaurant table reservation app(s)

2014 Startup Companies - From Venture Challenge.

I hope to add to this list in the future.

Quote

The fewer secrets I keep, the better I get at keeping them.

If somone said this to you, would you think them honest? Think on that for a while....

Recent Bookmarks

http://www.pubnub.com/blog/javascript-php-real-time-stock-quote-app/

SQL to create a line from a number of points
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1171521/linear-regression-confidence-intervals-in-sql

What is "Big Data"?

I get asked this often, usually by management level types who have heard it as a buzz word and really want to understand how it affects their business. Here's how I broke it down to my 14 year old.

If you look at the press (news, TV, commentators) big press means anything that has to do with the words, pictures and connections that people put on "social sites".

In the business world Big Data means ... well ... a lot of data. And I don't mean a little, I mean a ton. Think on the order of Billions of rows of data. A good rule of thumb would be any data that is over a Tera-byte in size. And that's the minimum.

The third thing "Big Data" could refer to is volume speed. It might not be huge in size, but how fast does the data get generated.

For example, let's say you record the date and time for any phone ring that happens within the United States in the next 30 min. And you had to pinpoint the busiest phone out of all the phones in the US. The data volume size is small. But the volume of data that comes in is crazy, your talking 2 million data points a second. And your "Big Data Solution" has to make some decision on that data within 60 seconds.

This is really the "new" and revolutionary part of Big Data as only recently (in the last 5 years) has the average computing power been strong enough to handle this volume at that speed.

The other reason "Big Data" is considered as new is because businesses have started to take new approaches to it. The goal is to figure out how all this data can be used to "hit" the bottom line.

Personal Opinion: 
The challenge that I see with Big Data is letting your solutions be driven by a measurable ROI or a measurable impact to customer.

The "Big Data" solutions that succeed are those that start with one of those two objectives in mind and move from there.

Nebulously built "repositories"/"reporting ware houses"/"business data troughs" don't really thrive in the long run. (Notice I said thrive, they serve a purpose and can be of value, but they don't generate that spark that makes the C-Level executives go nuts.)


So to put it concisely

1. Big Data is not social data
2. Big Data can refer to physical data size
3. Big Data can refer to the speed of incoming data
4. The goal is to use Big Data to affect the bottom line

Check my Facts:
IBM Article - Analytics-The real-world use of big data