Directory Experiment: An Update

My directory submission experiment is now ten days old, and it's time for an update.

From the point of view of traffic generation, it's been pretty bad. An almost total waste of time. Consider the following stats:

Directory (number of visits generated)
Blogcatalog (4)
Blogged (2)
BlogExplosion (1)
BlogFlux (1)
Globe of Blogs (1)
Genwi (1)
All Others Combined (0)

So for several hours of my time, I've been rewarded with exactly 10 visits, many of which were bounces. By comparison, putting a comment on the 37Signals blog tends to generate at least a few non-bouncers. And that isn't even work - just chatting with like-minded people.

The "directories" that are bringing any traffic at all are not really directories, but blogger communities more like Technorati. (Incidentally, I hadn't included Technorati, as I signed up for it much earlier and forgot. I've gotten no visits from Technorati.) To be fair to these communities, I haven't put any effort into engaging them. But why would I? I have no interest in discussing blogs with other bloggers. Any attempt to do so would come off as forced and ineffective. And I don't want bloggers to read this blog - I want business people, entrepreneurs, and hackers to read it.

The pure directories have sent exactly nothing to me. I'm not too surprised by that since I can't imagine ever going back to one of those sites to find anything.

I suppose that some might argue that the benefit of directory listings is in link link building, not traffic. I'm not sure how I would measure that, and I'm not sure I believe it in the first place. I have to believe that search engines are smart enough to recognize a crappy link when they see it. After all, hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap depend on it.

Interestingly, Alltop, which I mentioned the other day, has brought more interested traffic in two days than all of the others could in 10 days. I think Guy Kawasaki may be on to something.

Fix Your Picture Orientation in Rails

I've been working on a Ruby on Rails side project, and something that's been frustrating me for a while is that when I upload a picture that I took holding the camera sideways, the app won't recognize that the picture was taken sideways, and it shows up rotated 90 degrees. Worse, my computer does recognize the rotation and shows it properly. Not a good user experience!

The problem is that ImageScience (the image processing library that I'm using) doesn't use the exif data that was put in the picture file for this very reason. I was dreading the idea of writing some code to fix this, so I put it off until now. (Now that the site is live, I can't ignore it any more.)

Thankfully, I found this great monkey patch that fixes this exact problem. It took 15 seconds to implement and all is now well. Check it out.

Massive Scale Bootstrapping

Over on TechCrunch this morning is a post about a startup that aims to be Twitter, but with video instead of text. I don't even 'get' Twitter, let alone this idea, but what caught my attention is in the last paragraph:

They are bootsratpping [sic] it with 10 employees working for burritos.

Ten employees! Either someone has a strange definition of bootstrapping, or I'm missing out on an opportunity.

PS. If you are a Ruby on Rails developer who is willing to work for burritos (or any other food), please email me.

Monday Trivia: Most of the Internet is Never Seen

Website Grader says Bootstrap It! is in the top 26% of all internet sites when it comes to traffic.   There have been less than 100 unique visitors to this blog since it started less than a month ago. What does that say about 74% of the internet?

In all seriousness, Website Grader is a neat tool. Not because it matters what score you get, but because it will point out to you some areas for SEO improvement.

Directory Experiment: Pulling the Trigger

Yesterday, I began to compile a reasonable-looking list directory sites. The plan is to submit this blog to each of them and then track any traffic I get from those sites.

So far the process has been frustrating. I started with a list of more than 200 directories specializing in blogs and RSS feeds. After cutting the small, greedy, spamy, broken, or obviously worthless sites, I was left with 26 candidates for submission (see the above link for the list).

Some of them were having technical issues, so I've given them another day to sort it out. Those that were unavailable after another day were also cut.

I believe all of the remaining sites to be legitimate, although several are pushing my limits for poor quality. I felt it reasonable to include a few borderline directories because I want to see if (a) they work at all, and (b) the 'better' sites are truely better.

So here it is: the final list of directories (in no meaningful order) that actually received a submission from me:

Blogged
MyBlog2u
RSS Micro
Blog Search
ItsMyNews
Genwi
Mobispine
DayTimeNews
Photarium
Feedmailer
Octora
Globe of Blogs
Blog Explosion
BlogCatalog
5 Star Blogs
Blog Flux
FeedMap
RSSFeeds.com
BlogPulse

So that's it. Not a huge number, unfortunately. We'll see how they do.

From time to time I will update you on any progress. I don't know what to expect - direct traffic would be nice. Wish me luck.

Why You Shouldn't Bootstrap

Yesterday, I wrote a piece on why bootstrapping is a good idea for a seed stage tech startup. Today, I'm going to tell you why it can be troublesome. 

Pyschology

The other side of the control coin. You get to call all the shots all the time. If you get lazy, nobody will care. If you get distracted by something totally legitimate, nobody will care. Sometimes, if you're not careful, you will find yourself getting lazy and telling yourself that you're getting distracted. Going it alone can be lonely, especially for sales-oriented extroverts. Bootstrapping a business can take a long time. Are you prepared for that? 

Lower Expectations

Bootstrapping carries lower risk by it's very nature. There really isn't a lot of down side - just your time and what little money you scrape together to get started. With that lower risk, it's easy to lower your expectations. Should you really expect a cash-poor bootstrapped startup to be able to compete on the same level as a big corporation or even a venture capital funded startup? It's all too easy for a bootstrap project began as a side project to always remain a side project. 

Limited Growth Fuel

Money is the growth hormone of business. You need it to get huge, and you may not make enough of it yourself to get there. It's entirely possible that a bootstrap business may find itself in the position where it has flat-lined and lacks the cash to grow. Cash flow positive, yet unimpressive. When this happens, an entrepreneur needs to make a choice for his company - kill it or get funding. Either way, the bootstrap party is over.

Perceived Weakness

People tend to view tech companies through a venture capital lens. Surely, any company worth working for (or buying from) would have good, solid funding in place? It's not necessarily irrational to think so. When you bootstrap, you have to be ready to counter this perception every step of the way.

Cutting Corners

Boostrappers have to cut corners. It's a byproduct of the excessive cheapness that makes bootstrapping possible. Legal fees, trademarks, web design, accounting, payroll - all of it is done on the cheap, and sometimes that means waiting until later to do it right. Hopefully nothing will go wrong in the meantime.

So what's the answer? I don't rightly know. I know people who have made sizeable fortunes using nothing but thier own wits, and others who have used lots of other people's money. Either way seems to work.

The Directory Submission Experiment

One of the more common pieces of advice regarding SEO is to submit your site to relevant directories. I've never bothered before, as I've alwasy wondered how any of these sites could be of any value to actual people. Surely the search engines have learned to disregard them as noise? Or have they?

When I compiled my link building tips, I discovered a trend in the advice that seemed to come from the most reputable sources - people and quality matter. In the context of directories, that means directories that are screened and used by people. If such a beast exists, I'd like my websites to be in that directory.

With the help of this blog and RSS directory list  I was able to find 21 directories that didn't make my skin crawl (and another five that look interesting but were having technical problems). That says something when you consider that the list started with over 200. I thought it would be interesting to submit this blog to all of them and then see if I can analyze the quantity and quality of traffic from each (if there is any).

I tried to stick to sites that had higher quality graphic design, as that signals that they have an interest in pleasing real people rather than search engines. I wouldn't call many of them pretty, but at least they're not horrid. Human editing was a big plus for reasons I've gone over before. Also, if I'd heard of it, I added it to the list. But the main consideration for my selection was simple - could I find something useful on their site?

So here are my 26 candidates for submission:

Blogged
Blogotion
RSSHugger
MyBlog2u.com
RSS Micro
Blog Search
ItsMyNews
9Rules
Genwi
Mobispine
DayTimeNews
Photarium
Outpost Earth
Feedmailer
Tailrank
Octora
Globe of Blogs
Blog Explosion
BlogCatalog
5 Star Blogs
Blog Flux
Rojo
FeedMap
RSSFeeds.com
BlogPulse
Pub Sub

A handful of the sites either requested or required back links - there is nothing special about these directories except that they wanted links in exchange for their listings:

Blogotion - Quality blogs directory
MyBlog2u.com - Blog Directory
Photarium blog directory
Directory of Marketing Blogs

Next step: submitting to the sites

Why Bootstrap?

One of the simplest ways to start a business is to bootstrap the business at least to the point of sustainability. But why? Why not go out and raise a bunch of money, light the fuse, and hold on for dear life? It really comes down to where you are at this point in your life and what resources are available. Bootstrapping has lots of benefits.

First let me define what I mean by bootstrapping:

Bootstrapping is starting a company with your own money and funding its growth with the profits of the business. 

Control
Not taking investment dollars means that you own 100% of the company and your control is absolute. You get to control the pace. You can work part time, skip a day, or go on a 48 hour coding binge. It's all up to you. You don't have to worry about letting down partners or investors.

Simplicity
There will be no time spent dealing with investors, and much less spent on legal issues.  Your board directors will be very simple and management friendly, because you're pretty much the only one on it. This frees me up to do the important things: making and selling a product.

Long Term Value
Taking investment is selling your company's future profits. The sooner you do it, the more it's going to cost you. How much would you pay for half of Apple's earnings? Google's? Some startup you've never hear of? Enough said. The more progress you make before you take investment, the more of your company (and it's potential cash flows) you get to keep in the long run.

Less Distraction
Investors demand that their money be spent efficiently. Effectively deploying capital is how they make their money and keep their jobs. So, by proxy, you have to be just as good at it as they are. Putting piles of money to good use will take up a lot of time and attention. Time and attention that could be put towards building and selling a product.

Less Risk
Investors also demand that their money be spent quickly. Growth eats money. More growth equals higher returns. In fact, your typical venture capitalist will want you to operate at a severely cash flow negative state. Being grossly cash flow negative means that you will either succeed quickly or run out of money. That's just how the investment game is played. It requires the entrepreneur to forgo a third option: success at a slower pace. This can and does happen, with incredible results. This does not rationally fit into the venture capitalist's business model, however, and they rightfully have no interest in this sort of thing.

Flexibility
As a bootstrapper, You can try out an idea, see if it works, and then react quickly to either improve or abandon the initiative. The more money you raise, the longer this process takes. You have more people to work with, more at risk, more points of view from management, and bigger projects overall. At the very early stages of a business, a lack of responsiveness can be disastrous because the market and your product are likely to be changing rapidly. You must keep up.

No Choice
Finally, a great reason to bootstrap is that most tech entrepreneurs have no choice but to start out as bootstrappers. No rational investor would want to give you any money until they thought you were on to something, and you wouldn't want to take money from an idiot. Investors hate risk and love revenues. The more of the former and the less of the latter you have, the harder it will be to find any investment at all. This is common, normal even, for seed stage startups - they don't have anything worthy of investment. Until they do. So embrace bootstrapping - it's a part of starting a business even if your business model includes investment down the road.

Of course, bootstrapping is not the holy grail of entrepreneurship. I'll even go out on a limb and say that most, if not all, great companies will eventually seek out and secure investors in one manner or another. Tomorrow, I'll discuss the downsides to bootstrapping.

Upgrading Bricked My iPhone

I upgraded to iPhone 2.0 this morning. My efforts were rewarded with a emergency-call-only brick.

And my Apple hell continues...

20 Link Building & SEO Tips from Bootstrap Austin

Earlier, I mentioned how Bootstrap Austin members helped me out with some SEO tips. Specifically, link building tips. I've sorted, summarized, combined and edited. The result is this list.

Consider this post a plan of sorts - I haven't tried most of this yet, but it's the advice that rang true to me. I'd love to hear more about what does and doesn't work. Especially for startup sites without a lot of traffic. How do you get the ball rolling?

And now, the tips:

1. Think like a person, not a search engine. Algorithms always change, people don't.
2. Get links for traffic, not page rank. See above - page ranks don't read your content buy your stuff. People do.
3. Directories aren't very useful unless there is a human filter. Seeing a trend here? People crush computers when it comes to judging quality.
4. DMOZ is a waste of effort. This one I actually have tried. Your millage may vary, but we're going on just about a year since I submitted MomSquawk to DMOZ. It's like yelling in space.
5. Yahoo's directory is generally well spoken of, except I just can't pull the trigger on the price. Sorry Yahoo. Maybe next year. Besides, Google matters more.
6. The sites that link to you matter. Relevant, established sites that your visitors would like tend to help the most. Again - traffic counts, search benefits follow traffic.
7. The links from those sites also matter: Properly worded anchor text is better than "click here". Descriptive anchors are easy for people to interpret and follow.
8. Influence incoming link anchor text with keyword rich titles, headings, urls, and any anchor text that you are able to directly control, such as internal links. People are lazy and copy they see. Make sure it's what you want them to copy.
9. Use Google Webmaster Tools and/or Yahoo Site Explorer to find out what incomming links you already have.
10. Analyze your links - download them to a spreadsheet (you can do this with Google Webmaster Tools) and filter out everything but the good ones. That is, ignore all the spammy ones, the crappy directories, paid links, and the like. Only count legitimate links from interested sites. This helps give a better picture of the stuff that matters.
11. Figure out who your loyal visitors/linkers are. They should be in the spreadsheet you just made. Talk to them.
12. Use Google Analytics to judge quality. Bounce rate (the percentage of visitors that leave immediately) is a great indicator of qualty.
13. Check out your competitors links in the same way that you analyze your own. You might find some good ideas.
14. Ask for help! You may know (in real life) more potential quality linkers than you realize.
15. Link generously to others and do it right. You must give quality to receive quality. Use good anchor text on relevant pages and make sure to link to the right subdomain (www or not? - it can matter.)
16. I got one recommendation for WebPosition 4. Out of my budget, so I won't be trying it anytime soon.
17. Sign up for and use Twitter. Make sure your site is listed in your profile.
18. Make a Squidoo lense.
19. Publicize your site on any social networks you use.
20. Don't forget to keep your site well linked internally.

So there you have it. My back of the napkin SEO plan for this blog. Thanks, Bootstrap Austin.

Let me end with a request. If you see something on this blog that you like, link to it and tell me about it. I'll do my best to reciprocate the kindness in the future. (See, I'm starting on the plan already.)

My MacBook Pro Exploded!

Not much was accomplished today at any of my jobs. My MacBook Pro, which is just over a year old, was happily churning away this morning when my Apple Mighty Mouse just stopped working. No clicks at all. I've read some bad things about these mice, and I can't say my experience has been any better.



With high hopes that it was a software glitch, I rebooted. But as soon as I shut down, I heard two loud cracks come from my laptop. Not a good feeling. I turned the laptop over, and this was what I found.

The battery had split open.  (And of course, when the machine rebooted the mouse was still dead. Two apple hardware failures in 2 minutes - not so hot, Apple.)



Thankfully, I had a great experience at the local Apple Store (Barton Creek Mall in Austin). The battery was replaced free of charge with no questions asked despite the fact that it was out of warranty. (I didn't ask about the mouse - it's such a hellish piece of garbage that they'd have to pay me to take another one.)



Either Apple makes crappy hardware or I have some abysmal luck (My old MacBook Pro gave up the ghost after just 18 months). Here's the odd part: Not only do I tolerate this level of quality, but I happily pay a premium for it. What does that say about Microsoft's offerings? (No, I'm not going to use Linux. Don't even ask.)



Now if I could just get a mouse that works...

Attachment Fu Cropping

Forgive the technical post, but I'm a big fan of this trick, so I want all the Rails developers out there to see it.

I recently wrote about a modification to attachment_fu that would allow for usable cropping with geometry strings. Since I first tried the hack, Andy Croll (the author of the hack) has come out with an Evil Twin version, which was moved over to github today. He also forked attachment_fu with the same functionality.

I highly recommend trying it out. This functionality really belongs in the plugin. Note: It only works with ImageScience at the moment. 

SEO Help From Bootstrap Austin

They say SEO is an art, but I think what they really mean is that nobody knows how it works so they guess. On-page SEO, the part you can directly control, is pretty straightforward. Make sure that the things that people would find important (titles, headings, content, etc.) reflect the keywords that someone might use to find your site. There's more to it than that, but not much.

The part I struggle with is so-called off-page SEO, which pretty much means links coming from other sites to your own. Most everyone agrees that it is the most important stone in the SEO wall, but the standard advice is "get other high quality sites to link to your own", which sort of sounds to me like "get a high search engine position for your important keywords." Not very helpful.

To make matters worse, even legitimate SEO resources seem a little shady. Maybe its just the cynic in me, or the fact that SEO is such a moving target, but I just don't trust websites professing the latest techniques. I get the sense that many of them have never actually tried this stuff, and are just parroting what they've heard with the hope that they will raise their own site's awareness.

Enter Bootstrap Austin. Bootstrap Austin is a group here in Central Texas comprised of several hundred (last I heard) bootstrap entrepreneurs. The businesses they are involved in are numerous and varied, but there is a fairly sizable group that is well versed in all things internet. So I posted this question on their mailing list: "Can someone share some tried and true link-building tactics?" Sure enough, emails from members started to roll in with some great suggestions.

Other bootstrappers are a great resource. Use them.

By the way, I could always use some more SEO tips. Email me or leave a comment if you have a good one.

Monday Trivia: Mike Tyson vs. Pauly Shore

A snapshot of the number of visits to MomSquawk, a side project I started with my wife, from the big three search engines:

• Google: 52,086
• Yahoo: 5,332
• Microsoft: 1,366

It's like watching Mike Tyson fight Pauly Shore.