Eight Thoughts About Running a Blog Based Microbusiness

Here's an idea if you want to try something new and different. Last year I built Walkathon Guide and Walkathon Shop, which together form a web based micro-business that helps people who are planning walkathons. It gives away lots of advice and encouragement and offers an e-book, lap cards, an inexpensive customizable web site, t shirts, and other supplies. With my job at Ricoh, I don't work on it much any more but it is self sustaining now, continuing to bring in sales and help people.

What did I learn, you ask?

1. You should try it if you like to write. It's fun.

It's cheap and quick to put together your blog or website. There is an infinite number of puzzle pieces now available as free Internet services and many more for $5/month or so. You can pop one into your blog or shop and see what happens. I've listed some of my favorites in #8, below.

It is deeply rewarding to provide a real and useful service where there wasn't one before. I started this effort to learn, have fun and make money, but I pause to note what it feels like to be able to help people world wide. I hear from people in Kuwait, Singapore, South Africa, and next door, working on causes ranging from elementary schools to clean water to medical research.

You need to be in it for the long haul because it is a slow growing business.

But it's not hard. Anyone who likes to write can do this. It doesn't have to take too much time and you can grow it in higher and lower activity periods.


2. Start with a narrow niche and a simple, useful product. Over time you can grow it from there.

By keeping it narrow you become one of the experts and market leaders. I considered broader markets such as nonprofit fundraising in general. However had I chosen that, the search term wouldn't have been as clear and the markets would be much more competitive. It was surprising how much depth there is to even the smallest niche area once you look into it.

By keeping your initial product simple yet useful, such as my $14.95 e-book, you can quickly be of help to the people in your target audience. That way you build a two way relationship where you can learn what they need and they can see that you are doing honest work in their interest. Then you can add new products over time.

3. Take advantage of your tightly focused niche so that people who search for that one topic find you.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, means creating your blog so that people who would benefit, find it via their search engine of choice. To make your blog easy to find, pick the best possible, single word or phrase that you think they would use when searching for your topic. Use it as many times as possible in your headers, first paragraph, and captions. Repeat with every blog post you can. Use as often as possible but just on this side of being obvious.

I hear that WordPress.com is particularly SEO friendly and I have found that to be true. More on WordPress below.

4. Help your customers a lot, with every interaction, blog post, product, service.

There is no shortcut and you'll be happier anyway.

5. Help and be helped by others in your little industry.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoy the others in my field. We have done podcasts together, shared links, worked together to help our customers, and built nice affiliate relationships, and I see that other bloggers are doing the same in their respective fields. Everyone wins.

6. Like everyone says, connect via social media.

Find where your audience and influencers hang out online and go there too. I get a good amount of traffic from various social networking sites and Twitter. I'm just getting started with a Facebook page so the jury is out on that.

7. Take small, incremental steps. How to get started:

a. Brainstorm first, then narrow your ideas down to one, with a title (such as Walkathon Guide - How to Plan a Walkathon)
b. Start the blog and continue to post frequently throughout the life of the business
c. Hop into the social media circuits to find potential customers and other key players wherever they hang out
d. Start building the email list via the blog
e. Formalize the business plan via a very short slide set and run it by a few smart people to modify
f. Begin making connections with like minded businesses via Twitter, Nings, etc, to share links, become affiliates, do podcasts together, encourage each other.
g. Apply basic SEO to the blog
h. And then, build and launch a simple first product (in my case, the e-book).

8. A few great tools:

WordPress.com or WordPress.org: With WordPress.com you can get started immediately, you don't have to think about hosting, it handles SEO well, and your website with your own url costs $15 per year(!). It has limits to keep your blog a blog, not a website, such as no forms except a contact form. With WordPress.org you get infinite flexibility where you can purchase plugins for all kinds of functionality, so that you can use it to build your own entire website. You need to purchase hosting from any number of services that they list, or available elsewhere.

e-junkie.com: Manages payments for a downloadable e-book for $5/month. It handles downloading the book and keeps records for you. It has a turn key affiliate program for you as well.


PayPal.com and/or Google Checkout: These actually take the payments.

Homestead.com: One of dozens of easy website building tools, if you want to build a more traditional website vs. a blog. It's no harder to use than PowerPoint.

SurveyMonkey.com: Does surveys via web or email.

PollDaddy.com: Does polls - one question surveys that can be right in your WordPress post.

MailChimp.com: Handles sending nice looking, spam law complient email messages and maintains your mail list.

iStockPhoto.com: Little photos to add to your blog for about $3.00 each. Keep an eye on the clock when you go there. It is a great distraction.

Flickr.com: More photos to add to your blog for free, if you credit the source. Be sure to use photos from within the Creative Commons area.

My favorite inspirations: Roger Carr, one of a few others who blog about walkathons, and business bloggers and writers Chris Guillebeau (great free book, called, "279 Days to Overnight Success" ), Pamela Slim, and Naomi Dunford - all three have so many ideas on starting a microbusiness. They focused on tiny businesses and I don't share their ideas that "tiny is better" - all business sizes have pros and cons. Also I think their ideas apply in corporate settings as well. My favorite book is still "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey Moore.

Revisit: Easy Web Sites

Previously I created a post for folks who have small businesses and want to create a web site (click here to see it). I can now prove that you can create one for $15/year using WordPress. I created this one: http://www.walkathonguide.com. The site is free, but having it's own URL instead of http://www.walkathonguide.wordpress.com costs $15.

If you'd rather not have the home page be a blog, you can create another page, then configure your blog to use it as as Home.

I chose WordPress over Blogger because I didn't see an easy way to add pages with Blogger.

WordPress gives you about a dozen themes (looks) to choose from. For an extra $15/year they allow you to use a custom theme and customize your blog in various other ways.

One caveat - you don't get an email address with this. So if you need an email address to go with your url, like I have with lee@garverick.biz, then this won't work.

I'll be blogging more about this project as I go, from a microbusiness as well as a technology standpoint. If you know someone planning a walkathon, please send them my way! There will be more and more useful stuff and information there, just for walkathons.

I'm Mother of the Year! Best Viral Campaign of the Year in My Book, by MomsRising.org

Click on this image to see the video announcing my award!

This has to be one of the most clever marketing campaigns around, for the following reasons:

• The material is very fresh and funny.
• Everyone needs to honor moms the week before Mother's Day. Families honor moms, and moms honor each other. They offer a quick way to do so.

Congratulations to MomsRising.org.

Great Read: "279 Days to Overnight Success" by Chris Guillebeau

Chris Guillebeau has declared his goal to visit every country in the world by April 7, 2013. He is financing this effort via his blog. He has developed quite a following and I suspect that he just doubled it by putting out this free manifesto.

You can get the manifesto by going to his web site and downloading it. I read it cover to cover immediately - couldn't put it down. He has given away a step by step plan for creating a microbusiness based on blogging about your passion, then selling a high value series of e-books about that topic. Even if you don't plan to create a blog or e-book, I think this is well worth reading. A few key points:

• You don't need to monitize your blog via ads. You can do so by selling an e-book, or something else that would be of value to your readers.
• Find out what your readers need by continually asking them.
• Don't do a hard sell. Rather, develop a community around your interest and then sell only to those who are asking for the item. Marketing is replaced by community building - working with a core group of like minded people who can benefit from what you have to offer.
• He even gives the details on exactly what he makes and where the dollars come from.
  

There are great concepts for any web based business in this book, even if your effort isn't centered around a blog.

The rest of the blog is great fun as well, as Chris chronicles his travels.

Creating a Web Site for $15 per Year

This post is for my consultant friends who need a web site for credibility, and don't want to hire someone. I used GoDaddy's Website Tonight product. I am paying $45/year for two years. However, since then I've found easier and even cheaper options. Here is what I've learned. I'd love your comments as well.

Microsoft Office Live
Microsoft Office Live offers the same thing as GoDaddy offers except it's free. Then for $15/year you can get your own domain name. The user interface looks a lot more straight forward. Go to http://home.officelive.com/settings/pages/home.aspx.

Office Live gives you three steps to get your site up and going
1. Design it (using premade templates for most types of pages you'd need)
2.Get a url
3. Set up your email address.

I don't think it's any harder than using PowerPoint.

Intuit
I see that Intuit offers something similar. Please comment if you end up trying that one.

Blog-centric: WordPress
Finally, if you want your site to be blog-centric, consider WordPress. Then your home page will be your blog. Other than that, it offers the same capabilities to add pages, use a template for your look, and purchase your own domain name for $15/ year. No email. Some nice traffic reporting if you want to count visitors.

Final Tip on Art
I have been consistently pleased with www.istockphoto.com. They offer rights to use photos and artwork for as low as $1 per image and it's very easy to use. You can make your site much more professional that way.

Product Management for Web 2.0

This presentation, by Dan Olsen, does a great job of capturing the key concepts of Web 2.0 product management: Designing and Optimizing the DNA of a Killer App

Let the customer be the rock star

I'm seeing lots of job postings for rock stars who want to come help change the world. I know it's just a fun term. But I say, let the clients be the rock stars.

My favorite book toward that end is the business classic, Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore. Click here for a nice summary. If you're a marketing manager you've probably read it but I'll reiterate the main point. To succeed with a new technology business, start with one very well defined set of customers. Look at their needs from end to end. Address every single one, so it's a no brainer to use your product. Not just via the feature set, but all the other factors around it - quality level, documentation, service, add ons, delivery, so that they are sure to come out ahead even after all factors have been considered. If it's too much, simplify rather than sacrificing the winning experience by missing details that end up affecting cost or effort. Narrow your market to limit the scope of what you need to do.

Make your customers feel like rock stars for having done business with you. Make them references to their peers. Be the go to company for that one little market. Then you're ready to do the same for another market.

Keep this question top of mind: Looking at the end to end experience, is your customer getting an off the charts win?

Twitter Effects

Since I started using Twitter, my posts here have gotten shorter. I wonder what happens to your attention span after prolonged use. Wait. What was I talking about?

Lots of Case Studies on Social Media Marketing

If you're interested in Social Media marketing, here's a really big list of case studies.

Twitter Tip

Learning how to use Twitter for business purposes? I find a blog by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger useful, starting with this post ... http://tinyurl.com/6cj563 and including the comments.

Quickest Website

I think I've found the cheapest and easiest possible way to get a web site for small businesses like mine. You can buy a domain name on Blogger for $10 per year. It comes with free web pages, email, and a calendar and promises more features in the future. I'm wondering, is there a catch?

Tribes

I finished the book in two days. Again, pick it up to counteract the dark weather. What a motivator.

There are plenty of blogs and books about how to create and capitalize on Web 2.0 "tribes" for marketing purposes. This book hits hard on the human element, which is everything really.

The basic premise of the book is, "if you think leadership is only for other people, you're wrong. We need YOU to lead us." Society is moving from hierarchical to flat, due to cultural changes in some part, but more importantly, the ability for all to access information and communicate as broadly as they wish.

It's human nature to join tribes of all kinds. We love them - to belong to something bigger than ourselves, to work toward something we believe in or share our passions, to connect, to have a voice, to be heard. The old barriers are gone, so that there can be a tribe for every interest, regardless of geography.

While this book emphasizes the opportunity to lead, I'm also excited to think about the prospect of people being able to become members and find like minded others who used to be too few and far between. That is a great gift. All in all, a great thing for leaders and followers alike.

Some handy links:
Tribes on Amazon. The author encourages me to pass the book on, so if you email me in a couple of weeks I may be ready to do so. But if you can't wait, you can buy it... I'm sure he wouldn't mind.
The author, Seth Godin's blog
This person named Kristy Colvin, who points me to good books and ideas like Tribes: Fresh Webware

Tribes

I'm reading Tribes, by Seth Godin. If you are looking for motivation or just a really fun read, I highly recommend it. I'm halfway through and already I'm ready to save the world.

Insights from Gallery of Funds

Last week I went to a "Gallery of Funds" panel featuring Tom Dennedy, GP at Artiman Ventures and Brendon Kim, GP at Altos Ventures and moderated by Rebekah Wu of Right-Hand Partners. While I focus mostly on marketing tactics, it's always good to keep in mind why I am doing them, so I can offer insight to my clients and work in context of the big picture.

It was nice to hear both of their emphasis on the fundamentals. Brendan Kim brought up the analogy of hedgehogs vs foxes, where Altos goes for the hedgehogs - companies that are very persistent and do one thing all the time, really well. This is in contrast to the foxes, who are a bit more flashy, good at the glamor presentations, lots of PR. Also great, but according to Kim, "not our style".

When asked about their view on these troubled times, Kim's reply was "Don't worry, be scrappy", which he thinks applies to startups whether times are good or bad. He said,

1. Focus on what you can control and don't worry about the rest
2. Watch your cash
3. When in doubt, refer to #2

Tom Dennedy felt that while not ideal, the economic climate brings a few benefits to entrepreneurs, including the fact that there is a great pool of talent out there looking for work right now. At Artimus they look for companies that can leverage "white spaces", or areas of opportunity. They want to see good use of outsourcing, and a scalable business model from day 1. They are technology agnostic but look for companies that can dominate a market, whether via IP or other advantages. Their process is typically to invest $8 to $10 million per company.

Q and A

Wu - Why go to a fund like you vs an angel?

Kim -Angels can be good to get your product out the door and for good initial support. However it depends on what looking for. Down the road, an institutional investor may offer help in subsequent rounds of funding. Also, be careful not to price yourself out for down the road when you will seek additional funding.

Dennedy – If you opt for an angel investor, be sure you can be in a board room with this person for the next five years.

Wu - What percent of your deals were companies that were started with angels?

Kim - Nearly all had some kind of angel support. At least 70%

Wu - What percent of proposals do you accept? How do you measure failure vs success?

Dennedy - We do 5 or 6 deals/year. We accept 1% of what comes across our desks. We put serious time on 20 or 25 possible deals per year. Success really varies by the company - 1,000 paying users, or 1 big customer can be good metrics.

Wu - How would you describe a "fundable founder"?

Kim -

• No CEO experience necesssary
• They don't have a huge ego. They can handle bringing in a seasoned CEO down the road.
• There are self aware - they know what they are good at and where they need to bring in help.

Wu - Where do you recommend we cut costs?

Kim -

• Keep a low burn rate
• Or, you can take the strategy to go big and "fail fast" - either succeed or fail very quickly. This is less in line with the Altos view.
• Be realistic with your growth plan over the coming year
• Budget for a worst case scenario

Wu - What is the driver for you to get involved with seed level funding?

Dennedy -

• We still look for bigger investments. We can't afford to get in at the seed stage. However, this has opened an opportunity for smaller firms to come in and fill the void.
• It's cheaper to start companies now than ever before. For example, I know of a company called Branders.com. Their first generation web site cost $10M to create. The second version took three months and cost only $350K.
• Leveraging other infrastructures enables quick cheap development (infrastructures such as cloud computing)

Wu- What do you think of the IPTV market?

Dennedy - we have invested there but it's a tough space. It's mature with bigger players.

Kim - The market will take it's time to develop, to get to mainstream adoption. We're seeing greater adoption in Korea. It is highly competitive and takes time.

Wu- What do startup founders need to prove to be funded?

Dennedy -

• Market size. $1B potential.
• Differentiated product
• A business model that makes sense
• To show that you are disruptive, you can show that you can separate yourselve via your IP. Or you can show that you've created a barrier to entry, via the complexity of the problem you solve, via partnerships, via knowhow and time.

Kim -

• Show traction - that you've bootstrapped yourself and delivered an early product. Prove that people want it.
• If you can't show traction, show that this is a disruptive business model. Show a really good domain understanding.
• Articulate the time involved in getting good at the thing that you do.
• Emphasize your product and your experience
• I'm not a big fan of publicity. I'd rather see more substance.
• Show a quick high value user experience, especially if you have a consumer product. For B2B you have a little more time.
• The financial projection slide is more an indicator to me of your mindset than anything. Does it seem grounded and realistic?

Mind Meld for Better Messaging

Here is a technique I learned from Amy Kelm, an expert in branding and marketing communications. Amy's technique puts rigor behind mapping your key messages to where the customer is coming from at each step of the buying cycle, e.g., really getting into their head (think Dr. Phil).

So you've got much of your marketing strategy defined - target audience, influencers, value proposition, messages, key points in the buying cycle. Before you proceed to define your deliverables, this extra step will help you make sure each message is right on target.

1. Make a big table.
   
2. Across the top, list all of the members and influencers in your target market.
   
3. Down the left side list the following:

• What these members / influencers currently believe
• What you want them to believe
• What they need
• Communication objectives
• Value proposition
• Messaging essence - just a few words
  
• Messaging main points

Now fill it in. Start by paraphrasing their thoughts. Getting into their heads that way will really help you refine the communication objectives, value proposition, and messaging.

As you define and create your deliverables, refer back to your table often so you stay on track.

Remember, how do they feeeeeel....

Go For It

Welcome to my inaugural blog. I have a boutique marketing consulting business working with high tech companies. I'm an implementer and an evangelist.

My favorite thought of late comes from the groupery where I worked until this month. What they did, which I really loved, was if they got an idea, they'd definitely kick it around. But then they would try it. In the time it takes to meet, analyze, meet again, analyze, do research, meet... we could try the idea in real life and get real results. I joined them in the first place because of this. They put out their web service in just a couple of months and I saw it and I was hooked. Two years later they continue to refine and refine. But they got their earliest converts by delivering something useful for real life users, not with a lot of talk.

Of course a big key in this circle of trial and error is the other half of the circle - acting on the results, good and bad.

I know this sounds like common sense but just think - is this next discussion session or round of research really necessary or are you already ready?

This is a lot easier for startups than big companies. But, to use the words of the week, we can all be mavericks from time to time, doggone it. Go for it!