The report in figures: How I built a webdwan, with user-generated content, a civil-journalistic-social media site for $ 12,107 and 9 cents
In the process of creating Truemors, I learned a lot of interesting things about how to start a company in our “web-van” times.
The following is a brief report "in numbers".
The following is a brief report "in numbers".
- 0 I wrote 0 business plans for the site. The plan was simple: run the site in a few months, see if people would like it, and sell advertising and sponsorship (or not sell).
0 I hung noodles on the ears of 0 venture capitalists to finance the site. Life is simple when you can finance a company without going beyond the credit limit of your credit card.
7.5 . 7.5 weeks have passed since I registered the domain name truemors.com until the launch of the site. Life is also good because there are open source and Word Press programs.
4500 . The total cost of software development was $ 4,500. All the work was done by the guys from Electric Pulp . To be honest, before that I did not believe in teams working remotely on the very first version of the system, but working with Electric Pulp changed my point of view.
4824.14 . The total amount of payments to lawyers amounted to 4824 dollars 14 cents. I could turn to my uncle, who works in the field of divorce lawyer, and save a few bucks, but it would be short-sighted if Truemors was successful.
399 I paid LogoWorks $ 399 for logo design. Of course, that was before HP bought this company.
I do not know how much they would request now. :-)
1115.05 . I spent $ 1,115 and 5 cents on domain name registration. I could have done so much cheaper through GoDaddy, but I was too stupid and lazy.
55 . I have registered 55 domains (for example, truemors.net, .de, .biz, etc., etc.). I had no idea that you need to purchase so many domains in order to “surround” the only one you intend to use. Of course, I could register
fewer domains and less to spend, but what does a few hundred bucks mean compared to the cost of legal actions that will be needed to take a squatter domain away if Truemors succeeds?
12107.09 . In total, I spent 12107 dollars and 9 cents to launch Truemors. In the days of the dotcoms, entrepreneurs had to raise $ 5 million to try out some stupid idea. I proved that today you can do the same for $ 12,107 and 9 cents.
1.5 . A total of Truemors employees is equivalent to 1.5 full-time jobs. As for me, I work there for the love of art.
3 TechCrunch wrote about Truemors 3 times: information leak, leak with a screenshot, and discovery. I would like me to be so cunning as to plan this. Michael Arrington (Michael Arrington) believes that he forced me to do so. Do not stop, Michael!
261214 . To my amazement, on the first day, 261,214 page views were registered on the site.
14052 . To my no less amazement, on the first day the site was visited by 14052 people.
0 I spent $ 0 marketing on launching Truemors.
24 However, I spent 24 years on the "get- together " and prepay my previous projects to achieve
the moment when I can spend $ 0 to start a company. Many bloggers just lose their temper: "Truemors made so much noise just because it is Guy's site." To which I reply: “The truism has reached you.”
405 . Apparently, some people had nothing to do that day, and, not finding a better use of their forces, they wrote 405 postings on the first day.
218 . We removed 218 of the 405 postings because they contained rubbish, spam, inappropriate, or simply stupid.
Interestingly, half of the bloggers complained that the site was full of garbage, and the other half complained that I deleted their postings. :-)
3 It took only 3 hours before the site was hacked, and we had to close it for a while. It made a strong impression on me. The hacker who did this must be some future Woz. If it was you, please
get into contact with me.
36 It took only 36 hours to the moment when Yahoo! Small Business has told us that they can no longer serve us, because our traffic is too large.
29.96 . Our monthly self-sufficiency level was $ 29.96 while we were on Yahoo! ..
150 Since Yahoo! banished us, our monthly self-sufficiency rate has quadrupled
(Note. So Kawasaki, in fact, it turns out that in five) - up to $ 150. If you are interested in purchasing monthly sponsorship for 151 dollars - you will make Truemors profitable. :-)
2 It took only 2 days before Truemors was named the Inquirer “the worst website of all time” .
246210 . Thanks to the Lord for the Inquirer, because he brought us 246210 page views. Indeed, there is no such thing as bad PR in nature.
150 If you typed “truemors” on Google a week before the site’s launch, you would get 150 pages of output there.
315,000 . Eleven days after launch, Google’s issue of “truemors” was 315,000 pages. I can not explain how it happened, but I do not mind.
4 When I started Truemors, I learned 4 lessons:- Bad PR does not exist.
For 12,000 dollars nowadays you can do a lot.
You can work with a team thousands of miles away from you.
Entrepreneur lives well in our days.
')
I recently saw a presentation called Meet Henry and fell in love with it, so I asked its creators, Ethos3 Communications , to help me create something like this.
Here are these slides .
The world of Truemors is growing, and I am pleased to report on two plugins to Truemors.- Trickler is an application that provides an interface to Truemors in the form of a tape header.
AffinityBar is a Truemors toolbar for FireFox and Internet Explorer.
Summing up. Whether or not Truemors succeeds, I learned a lot. One thing I know for sure: now no entrepreneur can tell me stories that he needs a million dollars, four programmers and six months to launch such a company. With products like WordPress , MySQL and
Salesforce platform , everything is much easier and cheaper.
After spending not so much money and time, you can get something and see if your idea works. If yes, thrice hurray: there is no better time to raise money than the moment when your working prototype grows fast. In fact, it is possible that you do not even
will have to attract money.
At the same time, there is no worse time to attract money than the time when you have nothing but an idea. In fact, the worst time is when you spent the first million invested in you, and the product is still not ready.
I will end up with truism (do not confuse with the “trume” ). There is only one way to test whether your idea can be successful, and this way is to try, so get down to business.
PS We would be happy to attract more " trumporists ". These are people who have their Truemors accounts.
Anyone can post via voicemail, send texts, e-mail, online, but holdplayers can create, edit, save and delete their “trumeresque”. In addition, their names are highlighted in green to distinguish their postings from mere mortals.
- Trickler is an application that provides an interface to Truemors in the form of a tape header.
- Bad PR does not exist.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/31076/
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