Day 3/4 - $505, All $150+ contributors to get visibility
March 30, 2007 | 2 Comments
This weekend I’m having a simple script written — as an IFRAME, but using JavaScript.
Through the remaining time left, I’m going to have a script that randomly pulls a supporter of $150+ and display their logo, company name, and description they supply, and display it in the right-column of every page of the Ringside Startup website, and the Techquila Shots website (every page — I’m getting about 100k pageviews per month over there). I’ll tell ya what — for every $150 a contributor contributes, I’ll rewrite the script to give your ad greater exposure (thus, if there were 3 contributes — A $150, B $150, and C $300 … for every 4 pageviews, 2 would go to C, 1 to A, 1 to B).
Thus, you should get 200k+ pageviews (divided by total $150 sponsors). Maybe I’ll make it so that there are 3 logos displayed on each page.
I’m then going to give out this script to everyone — and readers, if you’d like to continue helping support Ringside Startup, then you can copy this script and place it on your blog. It’ll have a little logo to Ringside Startup under it, saying that these ads are displaying on your blog in support of Ringside Startup.
Yes, I haven’t been able to do much the past couple days — but I’m going hard at this Ringside Startup for next 49 days. I really want to make this a reality.
Anyone have other crazy marketing ideas for gaining reach and exposure?
Make Money With Twitter! 5 Monetization Models
March 29, 2007 | 22 Comments
With Twitter’s recent API addition, there is potential for many new applications to be built off the Twitter back-end (although, not quite yet). Twitter usernames are essentially keywords used for these applications built on the Twitter platform — and Twitter username squatting is happening. The question is, how will these new businesses monetize — and how will Twitter itself monetize:
The power in any advertising-supported website, publication, TV show, etc, is community (readers, viewers, listeners, etc). Build a great service, get people to use it (or read, listen, view) and you can then send out specific ads to those users. Example 1: Have a Twitter username for “Knicks” (i.e. NY Knicks, a basketball team in the NBA). People add that user as their friend — the “Knicks” username pushes out any Knicks news… the minute it happens! Ditto on sports scores — if a Knicks game is going on, it’ll send out the score during the game to keep you alerted, if you want to be. If you can get 10,000 Knicks fans on your list — then you can either:
1) Put an ad in any blank space at the end of your 140-character messages — i.e. “Drink an ice cold, refreshing Pepsi.”
2) Send out an advertisement every 10th or 50th (whatever you learn to be OK with your users) twitter. Thus, I may receive 10 twitters of news announcements, and the 11th is an advertisement for Grey Goose vodka.
Next options…
3) Pay-Per-Twitter Message — If there was a username called “NYCtechJobs” — any person looking for a tech job in NYC could be a friend of this list, and be notified instantly of any new NYC tech jobs. Where would those jobs come from? Initially possibly just from Craigs List, Monster, Hot Jobs, etc … but then say you have 2,000 users that are the friends of “NYCtechJobs”, that means you have 2,000 prospective tech employees in the NYC area. A company would love to get their latest tech job out to those prospects, so they can find a hire — thus, they go to a web page you have setup, and they are able to create a message up to 140 characters (likely include a URL to full job details) with some details on the job. You can charge the employer for posting this.
Ditto with a list (er, username) like “NYCfurniture”. People could pay to broadcast their message to all of the friends of “NYCfurniture”.
4) Charge for access to your Twitter messages — Your username can be private and only your friends can receive/view your twitters. Thus, if you had valuable/timely information — you could have a subscription-based service where you charge $X for people to be your friend, and then they would have access to your twitters. Thus, a celebrity could charge for this — or a newspaper might do this to give you access to the news first — or some blogger that finds online shopping deals could send them to you … basically, if the user wanted to be “in the know” for whatever offering, they’d pay $X for access (per week or month). Note: You’d have to verify their subscriptions — and if they haven’t paid for the month, you’d remove them as a friend from your Twitter account.
5) Commissions on user purchases — Setup a service that allows users to buy products through this. User would need to setup an account with you with their credit card (or PayPal info, or a deposit into this proposed payment service) stored. I imagine a user could be browsing Wired magazine and be able to quickly purchase a subscription for $10 by ripping out their cell phone, Twittering a code like “d buy wired”, with a confirmation coming back to the user and them approving the confirmation possibly using a password, then the transaction occurring.
The biggest question on everyone’s minds is what Evan Williams is thinking. They’re opening up their back-end to allow the development of applications on the Twitter platform (which I think is real smart, because people are going to build useful applications for Twitter users — and everyone will be using Twitter in some capacity more often) … but will Evan plan to charge these companies that are building apps? Will Evan not want these apps monetizing themselves? How is Evan planning to monetize Twitter — or will he sell and leave that to a Yahoo/Microsoft/News Corp to figure out how to extract value out of the massive userbase (like his sale of Blogger to Google)? I don’t think Evan knows the answers quite yet — he’s just focused on building a great application for users.
You can follow me at twitter.com/techquilashots.
“Pull” Twitter Apps Not Practical Until…
March 28, 2007 | 4 Comments
“Pull” Twitter apps aren’t very practical until a setting is added to each user account. Right now, if someone adds me as a friend — I still can’t receive any direct messages they send me, until I add them as my friend too. And even once I were to do that, I wouldn’t receive any direct messages they sent prior to me friending them.
(Note to Twitter team: You should notify a user if they send a direct message and the other party can’t receive it, because they aren’t a friend of that user. I’d just send a direct message back to the user from a ‘Twitter’ username that says, “You are not a friend of ‘[username]’ and your direct message did not send.”)
Here’s what needs to happen — I have a request into the Twitter dev team:
Basically we’re talking Twitter bots now. But in order for a username to acknowledge a direct message from a user, the username must add the requesting user as a friend first — otherwise it doesn’t get the direct message.
Thus, I’m suggesting under ‘Settings’ there might be a new category called ‘Friends’, with only one option right now — “Automatically become friends with users requesting to be your friend” (default option is ‘no’ or unchecked).
Otherwise, as a bot owner, I’d have to login to the bot’s username account multiple times a day, approve the users as friends… and by that time, the requesting user might forget about the bot, and never come back to it.
Note to Techquila Shots readers: I promise to eventually get off my Twitter high, but this is just too exciting at the moment for me. Ignore these Twitter posts if you don’t care about the service 
Crowdsourced VC Fund
March 28, 2007 | 5 Comments
James just wrote in the following, which I like his thinking — I just quite honestly have no clue how this could/would work:
I love the idea for a massively transparent startup process, and i look forward to participating.
That having been said, I’m not donating because you don’t pass either of my investing filters:
1. Is RS (ringside startup…) going to help make me money?
No. Being listed on the contributor page doesn’t count.
2. Is RSS a worthy charity?
No. Much more worthy funds out there.
I think your idea would be much better if you did give equity, and gave higher equity to those involved earlier in the process.
Just like the real thing!
What about all this SEC nonsense?
I guarantee that there are ways around it. Your investors need to organize their own fund, and invest as essentially a single investor. Each time investors create a fund, you should negotiate with them an equity rate just like you would with any VC.
The big problem, of course, is setting up the crowdsourced VC fund. That’s not my business, but I would invest in such a fund. And I’d like to see your venture help in the development of these kind of crowdsourced funding projects.
Day 2 - $480, Goals
March 28, 2007 | Leave a Comment
$480 total raised. About 50 days left. I’m trying for $20,000 — but minimum is $10,000. Thus, I need to get $200 of contributions per day. I have an option that if a contributor puts up $150+, they get to post their logo and add additional descriptive text. I’m going to start randomly displaying these on the sidebar of every webpage — to encourage business sponsors (essentially buying ad placement). Would be great to find 75 of these type of sponsors (1.5 per day).
Spoke to Jay Parkhill (lawyer) — I have to stay away from giving up equity, promissory notes (if the business isn’t a success, then it would definitely have to be shut-down, and I obviously wouldn’t be held personally responsible for getting money back into people’s hands — but anyhow, I don’t want to think about people putting up money and expecting anything more than some lessons learned from the community and advisors I have lined up. If the business actually launches, and isn’t a success — I think we’d all come out of it with some lessons learned that were worth a $10 contribution).
Still hopeful. Please help spread the word by emailing colleagues, posting on your blog, or better yet — reaching out to any businesses that you think might be interested in (essentially buying) ad/logo placement on the site.
Twitter - What Will Dominate: Content Push or Content Pull?
March 28, 2007 | 12 Comments
I don’t know what will blow up and be used more on Twitter — content push plays, or pull plays. Push would be having ‘NFL’ as a friend and getting all the latest NFL news pushed to you as it happens. Pull would be service apps like users requesting stock quotes, sports scores, yellow page phone numbers, etc.
There’s monetization capabilities in either — I’m sure the twitters sent out to the users won’t use the full 140-character limit. Thus, you can add some ad text — “Brought to you by Pepsi”.
Right now, the “pull” apps are a bit clunky — until Twitter resolves usage of “direct messages” as not being in the following format “d [username] [message]”. I see a day when companies have built apps using Twitter and are telling users in their ads, “Text to 40404: @Starbucks [zip code], to get the closest Starbucks address and phone number!”
Being An Idea Guy Really Sucks Sometimes
March 28, 2007 | 20 Comments
I’ve been on a Twitter high since last Friday night — I’ve had Twitter application ideas flowing through my body ever since (along with way too much adrenaline).
I’m holding my ideas in, and if I blogged them, I’d be doing the original purpose of my Techquila Shots blog (getting original ideas out there to talk about) — and I’d feel a hell of a lot better by getting them out there. I can’t stand holding them in; and I can’t stand knowing I can’t get them worked on. Since Friday, I’ve been a wreck — staying up too late, can’t concentrate on anything — it’s all been a massive blur.
Final Thoughts Before Bed:
- Twitter — This is blowing up. Right now, the direct messaging usage is clunky — must type in “d techcrunch hey what’s up” .. or for an app, “d forecast 14202″ — this will likely change to either “=forecast 14202″ or “@forecast 14202″.
- Twitter — I don’t know what will blow up and be used more on Twitter — content push plays, or pull plays. Push would be having ‘NFL’ as a friend and getting all the latest NFL news pushed to you as it happens. Pull would be service apps like users requesting stock quotes, sports scores, yellow page phone numbers, etc.
- Twitter — curious the % of twitter messages coming from web vs. text.
- Tempted to start paying a programmer to build some of these apps. Also tempted to find a programmer to do a rev-share with (on future suspected revenues) to build out these apps — or find a small investment from someone.
- I can’t afford to be spending money on programming my hopes and dreams right now. Thus, I should blog all these Twitter ideas I have and relieve myself of this anxiety.
- UGH!
“Focus.” I can already hear Eric saying this to me tomorrow.
If you ever feel this crazy — you’re an entrepreneur. So who out there’s an entrepreneur? 
Are you a Senior PHP/MySQL programmer?
March 27, 2007 | 1 Comment
If you’re a great PHP/MySQL programmer (and looking for some potential side work; specifically tonight) — email me. Please don’t waste my time if you really aren’t that good. You can just email me, but I’d like at the very least, examples of your work. Sample code of yours will give you an edge (as I can then truly verify if you’re great). You could attach your resume if you have it, but not necessary.
Twitter Usernames Are Like Domains in 1995
March 27, 2007 | 13 Comments
I posted an article on TechCrunch last night after I requested the Twitter dev team to open their API and expose “direct messages”. (Note: Some others had requested similar functionality from Twitter). I saw the potential of “direct messages” essentially becoming commands, so that applications could be built off the Twitter back-end — allowing users to send private commands to specific keywords (er, Twitter usernames) and those usernames processing a command via the API, and sending requested information back to the user.
This really opens Twitter up and there’s going to be a lot of applications built off the Twitter back-end (although I agree with one commenter: it’d be nice to know officially from Twitter whether they’ll ever plan to charge an application provider that builds off their platform).
Nik Cubrilovic just opened the can of worms regarding Twitter username squatting. I had lingo referring to this in the TechCrunch article, but I think Mike wanted to keep the post focused.
Twitter usernames are one-of-a-kind — and I kind of feel like this is 1995 and someone just told me, “Hey, you know, domains are one-of-a-kind — they’re going to worth money someday; people will be selling them to each other. In particular, the generic domains are going to be worth a lot.”
I’m patiently waiting to see who makes the first Twitter username sale. Will there be a “Twitter username after-market” someday? We’ll see.
Finally, Nik feels that Twitter missed out on an opportunity by not reserving these generic keywords ahead of time — I agree, but strongly disagree. I think the Twitter team is focused on building a great service — and a great back-end. I think they want people to build applications off of it and make it more apart of people’s lives. If you build an app off it, then people depend on using Twitter. Just like Evan’s Blogger.com (which he sold to Google) — he focused on building a great app, he didn’t worry about reserving the generic subdomains for ‘blogspot.com’ (Blogger’s domain for hosting).
Day 1 - $320, The Press, Plan B Options, Mike Arrington’s input
March 26, 2007 | 7 Comments
Last night I officially launched the Ringside Startup project. I actually had soft-launched last Thursday, notifying a handful of people — including the initial advisors. Wanted to work out any kinks before going public. The mistake I made was getting the thing digg’d that night — because come today, the digg is 3 days old — it only had a few diggs over the weekend, and I’m still not sure whether it could ever get to page 1 of digg.com now.
Last night I sent an email out to Pete Cashmore (Mashable), Mike Arrington (TechCrunch), Matt Marshall (VentureBeat), and Allen Stern (Center Networks). Pete posted relatively quickly (around 1am EST), but then posted another 8 posts before I woke up — so the post was buried if you read Mashable. (Note: Don’t compete on a Monday; wait and notify the press late Monday night or Tuesday morning). The others haven’t posted yet that I’ve seen — however other bloggers have done some posting (thank you!).
Received a lot of positive feedback/support from my Techquila Shots readers. Also received quite a few inquiries to the advisory positions — honestly, keep them coming in, but I’m focused on getting the contributions now and then in the future will possibly add more advisors. Right now, there’s nothing to advise on.
I’ve only raised $320 in reader contributions — thus, I’ve started thinking about Plan B options if I can’t raise the funds. I’m thinking I either need to Read more
