Land of the living

So I was driving around town the other day and contemplating why I would be interested in creating a site like SoarPort.com. I don`t really spend much time using Google Maps, drawing class diagrams, making org charts, and, too boot, I am not a real estate agent. So most of the principle drivers for a site like SoarPort are kind of absent. Except, of course, the reason I settled on: appreciation. I reasoned that I have the same basic make up internally that sees technological applications as would an art buff see paintings. And further, I felt this was a differentiator - that I was special in this world of emptiness, because I was able to pick out and appreciate engineering feats, where others took them for granted.

 

Then I parked next to a Mercedes ML350.

 

So I pretty quickly came to the realization that the line which separates engineering and watercolor painting is absolutely razor thin. People all over the place are not only capable of appreciation of engineering art, they crave it. They will line up to pay huge sums of cash to get their hands on a technologically advanced, yet artistic, item.

 

And it quickly dawned on me that driving these innovations are people. People who are proud to see their efforts appreciated by those who see the art in their creations. And it kind of hit me that its about time I joined the land of the living, so to speak. Like, `wake up man...if you have the talent to make something people might appreciate, then on with it!!`

 

And so, in a roundabout way, I think I now have a greater understanding of why I put SoarPort together. Its about seeing something worthwhile, and putting it out there so that if someone can enjoy it, well, mission accomplished. That`s it.

 

That`s the whole goal.

 

And yet, that`s also all it needs to be.

HTML Validation

Well, SoarPort does not come up clean on an HTML validator. At first, I was quite disappointed. Then I ran Google, Microsoft, YouTube, and Yahoo. They all failed. Google had 62 errors...62! So what's the point is the websites that drive the internet don't validate?

Well, no one can be positive they can parse your site. OK. Who cares? I'd only want someone parsing my site to get it to be more easily placed into search engines, right? I mean if I want to expose a part of my data, the correct method to use there is something like RSS, or an API which more carefully governs that communication. I mean, it seems to me that if I spent as much time blogging as it would take to make my site valid, I would have achieved a better net result via blogging. I would do more to promote my site; for a longer term; and I would be able to provide some meaningful context....not just ease the parsing. And to be frank, I believe there is value in making parsing difficult. Like many sites, mine is set up to communicate with a human eyeball...not some text parsing engine. Since I already know that won't impact my ability to be included in Google (whereas blogging will most certainly help in that regard), I'm done wasting my time with it.

Audience Building

When it comes to drawing attention to my ideas, I really struggle. I'm sure the way most people achieve success on the net starts with a large network of friends from who website owners build momentum. But for people who lack a large network of friends, or who are operating in stealth-mode (or both), gaining an audience on the web is particularly challenging. Certainly the stealth-mode aspect of my web efforts is very challenging. I want to engagae my co-workers, but I feel such as thing is inappropriate. I wouldn't ask co-workers to purchase tupperware, or sponsor my kids soccer team...so asking them to essentially either test my website or click on my ads is just plain wrong. I suppose if I were creating a website that directly benefitted them in a professional way, then fine; however, I tend to think that would also create a dilhemma for me as it would likely represent a conflict of interest between me and my employer. For example, if I felt a co-worker was unhappy at work and I recommended he check out my cool job posting site, that might bode well for me and him, but not very well for my employer. Even if it all worked out in the end for all parties, employers are very focused on retention, so an inside source of headhunting is really counter-productive.

Anyways...I'm trying to walk the fine line between avoidingg a conflict of interest and gaining an audience for my site. I'm trying to follow the path of patience - letting Google do its thing, blogging about my experiences, resisting quick-fix ideas like email spam or wedging my content onto digg/netscape, etc, etc. Having said that, I did make an effort to get my site on Digg, and it really felt like pandering, so I kind of gave up. I mean, that kind of shameless self-promotion...that's really not what I am about here. This is my "beads", my "candles"...you know? My hobby which will never really make any money, but the fantasy that it just might is what makes it fun. If you have ever watched The Office, you know what I'm talking about - Jan has her candle business, which is just an absurd business model. In much the same way, a website is a pretty absurd business model, which is why I do this because I enjoy it. I've already stated that I also enjoy the fantasy that it might make money...but I will not be investing much myself, nor will I be accepting investment money from family/friends.

So the path to audience building for me is "slow-burn". I've put out some notes to heavily read bloggers, like TechCrunchand Mashable, and although it is perhaps a fine line, I consider my efforts to be grass-roots, as opposed to big bang. Its not like I'm making TV ads, or having wrestlers tattoo SoarPort.com on their face.

One other point I will make here is that about advertising; and don't think it weighs lightly for me. My preference would be to not have advertising on my site. It cheapens it - big time. But the fact of the matter is that advertising is the only way in which I believe it is possible to make money on this site - not a huge amount, but enough to cover costs - at least for the short to mid term. There are some features which could be categorized as premium services which could be added to the existing SoarPort concept, and a fee could be associated with those improvements. But the core idea would always have to be free for anyone to use. I think most surfers agree that google ads are a fair price to pay for viewing/using content online. In fact, people are so used to them, it is debatable if they have much merit. I suppose it is a bit of a chicken and an egg thing - you need a large audience to make ads worthwhile; but by then you probably have other revenue options you can consider that would be more lucritive. And to get that audience, you have to hope you don't ostracize the early adopters with ad-overkill. So, a fine line...and hopefully I haven't ham-fisted my way over it.

The Nonsense Factory

I would say it is by the grace of God I still have a functioning laptop right now...that I have not thrown it across the room is evidence of divine intervention. I'm trying to create a Gadget to use with SoarPort, and the developer interface sucks like no other.

So let me back up. I decided a good way to get exposure to my site was to get onto Digg.com. I thought I would just go ahead and brute force my way on to that site and see where it got me. But while on Digg, I noticed they had created a Google Gadget for their content. Given as how one of the Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Tips is to link to other popular sites, I figured this might be a good idea for my site as well.

I guess the folks at iGoogle either really want to prevent people from using gadgets, or they have a cement fortress around their walnut sized brain that would remain unbroken even if hit dead center by the hoof of a donkey. What a pain in the ass. The instructions are terrible. Thee code editor they have is incredibly terrible. Some genius actually took the time to code into the "save as" window some hack which prevents the cursor from showing. So if you ever try to place your cursor mid word, it is not possible to tell your location...not without randomly deleting, then reading characters. Logic? And if you save, then publish your gadget - get this - you might actually try to use it to, like see if your changes worked. By, again, the monsters of intelligence at google decided it would be a really good idea to keep the saving and publishing ou of synch....so when you publish, the content you are seeing is not only not your most recent save, it may be a save you made 20 minutes ago. The only way you can be sure the published content is accurate is if you rename your file each and every save. Which brings us full circle to the save as window, and at about this point, I'm thinking iGoogle ain't all that worthwhile after all....

It's Alive!!!

So my site is now up and running. The site is called SoarPort.com and the idea is that it allows you to easily publish large dimension images online. This is different than Flickr or Picassa because once you publish the image at SoarPort, you can embed the SoarPort viewer, which is similar in its behavior to Google Maps or MapPoint. You "Soar" across the large dimension image through a "port" right within your blog or webpage.

Legend has it that YouTube was founded on the basis that publishing video content to the web "sucks". Well, one of the few remaining objects that is still a pain to publish to the web is(are) large dimension images. I've tried to make this process much easier. Near as I can tell, if you wanted to publish a large dimension image pre-SoarPort, you actually had to publish it twice: once as a squished version to display on your main page, then once in full zoom to be published in an alternate location to which your main page could link.

I look forward to hearing what people think of SoarPort. The site is in an early beta right now. Of course, it is a free service (and will remain so), so there's really no cost to using it. Enjoy.

Here is an example:

Oh how I hate facebook

So a significant part of my idea is to allow people to embed content they have uploaded to my site within their own web pages. So for example, using blogger, this is no problem. For Facebook, however, it would appear its not possble....not without jumping through a series of hoops.

You know, that's really my beef with Facebook. Its whole layout. The social networking thing, as much as it is about the most hype-driven concept I've ever seen - including the original dot com bubble - well, social networking has its place (let's leave it at that). But the layout of that site. Je-sus. If facebook was a car, there would be 2 steering wheels (both in the trunk), an accelerator inside the right wheel well, and 15 rear-view mirrors which were not adjustable. But the real killer for me is how many people must think I'm dead wrong and that Facebook has it all arranged properly. For me, a site like Eventful is what social networking is supposed to look like. Same for YouTube. Facebook is not like any of those....things are really buried, and interfaces to do things change depending on the application you are using. And terms like "FunWall" may seem cutsie-poo, but they don't actually make sense. Especially given as how at best this is a guestbook, and at worst is overpromoted to have functionality it doesn't (i.e. what the hell is "embed-code" that doesn't accept video content from sites other than YouTube?)

Anyhoo, for now it appears my idea will simply not work with Facebook, and you know, as much as I'll pay for that in terms of publicity, I'm o.k. with it. In a perverse kind of what, I'd be more proud that my work didn't work with Facebook, than I would if it did. If my code worked natively with Facebook, then I too must have put the steering wheel in the trunk. Get it?

A couple of plan items

I devled into my plan a little more and thought about the "idea". I once read a marketing book called "Origin of the Brand". The gyst was that in nature things don't combine, they split. In business, the same was true, although people tended not to pursue these types of opportunities. And I think there is something to that. After all, some of the biggest sites on the net today weren't started by existing big players. YouTube wasn't part of a conglomerate when it started up - whereas Google Video was. When people think of the worlds best search engine, they think about Google. But when they think about the worlds best video site? They think YouTube. And even though a littany of video sites entered the market after YouTube, the way it works is there is 1 big player, and another nipping at their heels. Everyone else gets to fight over 3rd.

The point with an idea is to think about smaller markets which are not yet exploited and to create a new "category". For YouTube it was the short video market. Granted, the video market was nothing new, but they bit off a piece of the market which they could be the dominant player. As luck would have it, that was the piece everyone actually wanted. And they really hammered the point home by letting people upload their videos, then seamlessly integrating them with their existing webpages. In other words, they wanted to the short video market, and nothing else. Naturally, they got more, but people start by accepting ideas truly intended to serve. Micrsoft could never make a site like YouTube, because the original business plan would have looked like such a disaster. But had they...accepted an idea that they knew was small fish and taken it on the chin for a while, they would have reaped big rewards in the long run.

So I've reevaluated my idea, and the good news is I think it does fit with the above sentiment. It is a subset of a larger market, and the specific area I'm targeting appears to be unexploited. My idea is also quite youtube-ish in that you can use it sealessly in your own webpages.

So there is a little refinement having considered the above info, but more or less, its business as usual. I'm right now evaluating my SEO options, because for this idea to work on the web, search positionn optimization will be a big deal. Later!

Getting Started

I've set up a few websites in the past, but they haven't really worked out well. So I must have something wrong with my execution. I know that I have a real problem in terms of my planning. To be more precise, I have no plan. So the subsequent lack of success can't be considered much of a surprise, I guess. So I've decided to take a moment, pause and try to proceed according to some form of planning.

I've done the technical portion of the project. And I believe it has merit on its own. But the idea is intended to serve the people who use it...so how do I let them know it exists, without appearing to pander for attention? That is a major dilhemma for me...I've never really gone beyond that hurdle. What I probably need is a smaller group of people to use this thing, then have them either let me know what to improve, or encourage others to use it. Obviously, that's the idea situation....it's a good enough service that people will ask others to use it.

I think I'm going to step into a plan here. With some kind of plan, I can tell if I am meeting the goals I have for this project. Like most projects, it will be a plan which has milestones that map to tasks, not revenue. I suppose there are some milestones in some projects that map to revenue, so maybe I will have to think about that.

I'm going to get started on my plan. Hopefully, if I have completed the steps I feel are required to proceed, I will be able to share my plan in my next post.

Introduction

The idea here is to document my path as I attempt a startup. I'm going from kelvin (absolute zero) with a hope of someday taking the site to a point where it can actually make money. I guess even that is still a fairly short term vision. After all, you can have an amazing idea and not make money at it. So what I'm getting at is that I'd like to achieve "success" and my initial instinct is (or perhaps more accurately "was") that success = money.

I'll probably go back and forth on this one a few times in this blog. I'll think of my idea as "serving" folks on the internet, which is a noble/good thing, and then in the same breath wonder about how much money I can make with this idea. Given as how I think I'm basically wedged into a business model of advertising or bust, the revenue opportunities - as relucant as I am to admit it - are slim. To actually make money, I would eventually have to get creative with what I could sell; whether that was direct to the web community or to companies who could use the technology.

Ok, so lets maybe get back on track here a little bit. The startup - all started with an idea. Since it is still in the final stages of inclubation, I can't actually disclose the idea just yet. I have some small financial "adjustments" (i.e. I'm selling some crap in my basement to fund this thing) but once they are complete I will be registering the domain name and getting hosting sorted out. This much I think I know: I am going to go with GoDaddy. That may even be one of the very first big decisions I or any startup has to make. Maybe I need to establish what even constitutes a big decsion. I think something which cannot realistically be undone should be considered a big decision. The idea I select is a big decision. The name I choose is a pretty big decision. Where I get my hosting is - by my definition - not a big decision, since I could change web hosting companies in a weekend, without a disruption. In fact, I'm sure it happens all the time. So perhaps it should be noted only as an anecdote - I'm going to sign up with GoDaddy. I set up a friend's site there, and added a promo code of WALK2, and I got something like 20% off my order, which meant I "saved" $10. I suppose that's not bad, considering Godaddy gives you 10GB of space and a whole heck of a lot of bandwidth to burn.

So I mentioned the name as a big decision. I always shudder at that thought. Marketing types would nod in agreement (big time) that the name of the site is vital. I'm kind of saying it is as well, but not really for the same reasons. True, you want a name that doesn't suck, but so long as you can go with it, talk about it, write about it, etc, then chances are its about as good a name as "YouTube" or "MySpace". I mean seriously, they have marketing people involved in these decisions? As I understand it, a couple of kids came up with "YouTube" and it is one of the most important sites on the net. What more could a marketing person add to the conversation. I came up with a name that I think is fairly savvy, and it also relates to the site itself - the service the site provides. Kind of like "Facebook", if the name "Facebook" were savvy. The final comment I have on the name is this: it has to be something you can live with. Once it is rolling, you can't tell people "Oh gee, remember how I used to call it www.digg.com? Well, I decided www.yipperyapper.com was better...so can you please update your bookmarks?" It doesn't work that way...people may be able to accept the pace of change on the internet, but that kind of change has virtually no audience. In the "biz" they call it "rebranding" and it sucks big time for everyone involved. The only reasonable reason to rebrand is because someone is suing you over the name.

I guess the name is still not at the root of the matter. To get to that, you really need to consider the idea. It startles me that I hear Venture Capitalists won't sign non-disclosure agreements with entrepreneurs because ideas themselves have so little value. It kind of flies in the face of the whole patent thing, doesn't it? At least most patents carry a significant barrier to entry - I might have a great idea for the web, and Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, you name the big fish - they could probably whip it up in a weekend. The web is kind of the anti-barrier, and efforts are made all the time to lower the bar again. Programming languages don't get harder to use, that much is for sure. I cut my teeth on C++ with some assistence from ATL. To get an app truly ready for prime time involved a QA effort that was otherworldly. Just some of the garbage we went thru that you don't even think about with C# - releasing pointers, GDI objects that suck because you didn't select the old object before you deleted it; the mess that is the char array; IDispatch interfaces (using the IWebBrowser...trust me it sucks like there is no tomorrow)...no question, things have come a long way. So why are ideas so worthless? Well, the answer is, they're not. Not if the intent of the idea is to serve. If the intent of the idea is to make money, then yes, it probably is worthless. I think Microsoft Word is worthless. But I think Microsoft Virtual Server is valuable, even though I am not so naive as to think Microsoft put VM software on the market in an effort to "serve" its customers. Making Windows a system that can concurrently run Linux helps gray the line between the two...thus helping maintain or increase Windows market share. And obviously, if you can reduce the IT spending on hardware while having little to no impact on IT Windows spending, that's pretty much a huge win for Microsoft.

Anyhow, back to the idea. Mine was going to be an idea that served. I have had too many ideas whose sole function is to make money, and it has been painful watching them die. Its not so much that the ideas themselves were so bad, but in hindsight, it seemed very arrogant to ask for money for the types of things I was offering. One was a text to speech instant messaging system, which was pretty savvy back in 1999. Although the core idea there was a free service, the idea ultimately was to set up kiosks all over the place and tie into the normal phone line. All still sounds good, but if you think about it, even $0.25 per use is just ridiculous, because all the system really did was read email on the receiver's end. And free is all that service could ever hope to be. The next idea was a button users could put on their site where if visitors clicked on it, they site owner would be notified and they could call the customer at the customer's leisure. The idea being this way the customer doesn't have to wait on the phone, they can be called directly. A good idea, but I started ouot by trying to charge a monthly fee....and unless the service had taken off like a mad cat when it was free, there was absolutely no chance it was going to take off if there was a cost associated with it. And that really is the fundamental connundrum: everyone - myself included - fully expects the web to be 100% free. So how do you set out to do something noble, and turn it into enough of a money making venture to pay your bills and a little something for your efforts?

As I continue to explore my latest startup, I will post my findings in this regard. I feel a name and an idea must have something to do with making money, and I also believe you have to work to deliver something which serves people first and foremost. As it stands right now, I have a name and an idea that "serves", and I have absolutely no clue how it will make money. My initial guess is through advertising, but at this stage, I really don't know how successful that will be. In upcoming posts, I will aim to narrow this down and produce from my experiences a map that can be used to repeat the success I hope to have. I look at it like this: website development, regardless of how silly this may sound, is my hobby. I recently came to this realization when it dawned on me how much time I spend not only working on my web projects, but how long in a historical sense. I mean, I have been at the web for 10 years. Granted, it has help yield a great career in the software field, but the internet itself has remained very elusive for me. Perhaps the challenge is the thing itself. We'll see.