WorkHappy.net: killer resources for entrepreneurs

Launch Effect

November 4, 2011 in 4 out of 5 stars, A piece of software, Analytics, Free, Landing Pages

What is it?

Launch Effect: A free WordPress theme anyone can use to quickly create a professional looking, virally inclined pre-launch page for your upcoming product website, app, service, etc.).

Who makes it?

Barrel LLC

Why is it the killerest?

First let me state that I'm saving you some trouble, because I did this the hard way first. For my latest venture I started by building a pre-launch site from scratch. It's a couple pages, right? How hard can it be? Well - to do well, actually - kinda hard. Or, time consuming anyway. Consuming of time you should be spending building your New Thing.

1. It's very easy to set up - virtually anyone can do it.

I'm no WordPress guru, but I went from nothing to a fully launched site in just a few hours. First, I fired up a super cheap hosting account with my registrar NameCheap. Once my account was set up, I logged in, installed WordPress (literally a few mouse clicks), then downloaded the Launch Effect theme, uploaded and installed it in my WordPress, made a few tweaks, and my site was ready to go. 

2. It's got built in social-sharing tools and viral spreading motivation 

This is perhaps the nicest feature and something you likely wouldn't have time to build yourself. And it's all baked in, and very easy to configure. 

How it works: After someone gives you their email address, they're presented with a thank you message, and a panel of social icons they can click to share. 

Subscribers are also given a unique tracking link. When they use that link (or any of the icons) to share, you and they will both be able to see how many folks they've sent to the site, and how many signed up themselves.

Additionally, you can give them an incentive to share. On mine, I'm giving away a free lifetime account to someone who shares and leads someone else to sign up.

3. It's got great built in tracking

As mentioned above, each person who signs up will show up in your admin panel, along with the number of clicks they've sent you, and how many of those have also signed up (plus conversion rate). Both you, and they can see these stats at any time.

What could be improved?

Tracking your referrals is too confusing for visitors.

When a visitor shares, they have access to their referral, and conversion stats, but in order to see that information, they have to re-submit their email address into the signup form. Clever - but how on earth are they supposed to know that? There's really no good way to communicate that to them at this point.

It needs to integrate with MailChimp and/or Campaign Monitor.

First, it's very easy to export your signups in a CSV and import them into MailChimp - which, if you're only going to do that once, is no big deal. But ideally, you'd like to get an auto-response email to your signups. This would allow you to tell them about the referral stuff noted in my last complaint, as well as a few other bells and whistles that MailChimp offers.

It's a bit hard to fully customize without touching the code.

Out of the box, it probably does most everything you need, and you can certainly make a perfectly good-enough site without customization. But if what you want to do isn't exactly what the theme expects you to do, you'll need to dive into the css and/or php files. This is a minor niggle though, it has very solid customization constructs.

It has only a small subset of the available Google Fonts to work with. 

That said, they do natively support TypeKit and MonoType.

And I note, they're working improving it. This roadmap looks great.

How much does it cost?

Nothing (it's free)

Rating?

Reviewed by Carson McComas

p.s. Here's the one I set up. If you make one, please share it in the comments below.

 

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Why entrepreneurs should be watching Discovery Channel's "Gold Rush"

November 1, 2011 in Television

I enjoy entrepreneurship, startups, business and the like the same way my brother in law enjoys baseball and basketball. Which is to say, I'm a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth fan. Rarely a day goes by that I don't read, study, research, observe, or consult on the topic. And like many of you, I'm constantly engaged in my own attempts at it. It captivates my attention like little else.

I'm only a casual sports fan, so working this metaphor further will be perilous, but I'll just say that Gold Rush is as close as I'm going to come to the euphoria, mental swings, and irrational emotional investment that some folks have watching sports. 

Gold Rush is extra interesting to me because it has all the elements of an engaging startup story, but in a completely different context than my world.

For the uninitiated (and my apologies for those outside the US who may not have access to it), Gold Rush is a TV series which follows a team of hard scrabble, go-for-broke, all-in, heart-and-soul, down-on-their-luck dreamers who aim to cash in on the current high price of gold by starting a mining operation in Alaska.

Watching the sacrifices they make, the bond that builds between them, the impossible odds against them, and their pure unflagging determination in the face of a relentless wave of obstacles is, in a word, inspiring. The parallels to the startup world that you and I live in are myriad. 

There are probably some weirdos who appreciate entrepreneurism, yet don't like this show for some reason, but I can't imagine who. The (relative) ratings boom the show has enjoyed confirms that my affection for the show is not uncommon. If you enjoy a good story, an against-all-odds tale of struggle in realizing your dream, this is a bit of television well worth your time.

If you haven't started yet, do yourself a favor and start with season one. Unfortunately they don't make it easy. But there are a couple options.

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Answers on Startups (a Stack Exchange site)

May 17, 2011 in 4 out of 5 stars, A community, A website, Business Intel, Business Planning, Expert Advice

What is it?

Answers.OnStartups.com: A question and answer site focused on Startups and Entrepreneurship.

Who makes it?

Stack Exchange (with a dash of clout from Dharmesh Shah)

Why is it the killerest?

Stack Exchange (the company behind this) have built a highly effective Question-and-Answer gamification format offering. They started with the absurdly successful Stack Overflow which is focused on answering software development questions, and applied the model to various other topics, including startups.

All of us have questions as we venture into these challenging startup waters, and Answers OnStartups is a productive place ask them. Because of the reward system built into the site, you will typically get high quality, and varied answers from experienced folks who know what they're talking about.

It also skews heavily toward online and software startups, which is where my own passion lies (as it does for many of you).

What could be improved?

I've been watching and participating for a few weeks now and I've had a great time, but two things could be improved:

1) The number of participants. What it has now is great, but I would love it to reach the level of some of the higher volume Stack Exchange sites. I know a bunch of you reading this have valuable insights to share, so get over there.

2) Some repetition in questions. Equity splitting, marketing, and funding questions occupy a large percent of the questions. That said, there are still interesting and helpful questions posted frequently.

How much does it cost?

Free

Rating?

Reviewed by Carson McComas

 

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How to find a good domain name

May 5, 2011 in Happy Links

Finding a good domain name is hard. If you're like me, you've spent absurd amounts of time on this task. Including time which would be much better spent building your product/website/company. 

Here are a list of tools I use which have significantly reduced the time I spend looking for a good domain, and have also significanly improved the quality of the domain names I end up with.

1. Domain Hole - use Beta code "TWITTER" to get in (as of this writing).
2. Panabee 
3. Name Station
4. Bust a Name - takes a little getting used to, and is a bit painful to use, but can be valuable at getting you to think about connected ideas
5. Value Drops, these guys update every day with quality domain names recently expired.
6. Domai.nr helps you find creative url structures for that name you really, really want to use.
7. Wordoid helps you make up names.

And finally here's an even more comprehensive list of tools - dozens deep.

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Landing Page Case Study - Invoice Bubble

July 15, 2010 in Landing Pages

Rounding out my landing page coverage, I'd like to share some insights from a page in the wild that does a nice job incorporating the principles we've been discussing here. 

Stu Green, the creator, was kind enough to answer a few questions about what they're doing:

How are you getting traffic?

We have a few channels that put traffic through to Invoice Bubble. The best way to get solid traffic is by getting reviewed or getting featured in CSS galleries. We got a lot of traffic after being featured in a web gallery called Web Creme, plus we also had a few writeups and reviews on sites like MakeUseOf and Tuttoaster.

How well is that traffic converting to signup?

The social buzz really kicked up when we made Invoice Bubble free. We suddenly found that we were getting lots of traffic through social bookmarking because it changed from being another premium web app, to being a useful and FREE tool for freelancers. When that happened our signup conversion also shot up from about 2% to about 8% of all unique visitations, which is a massive jump - but one that you would expect given the very low risk factor for signing up (its free).

Those are nice conversion rates. What principles are you employing on your landing page to achieve that success?  

Our landing page is simple. It says what it does on the tin "Free Online Invoice Software". Everything is big, clear and obvious with no messing around. We have clear call to actions to either "Get Started for Free", or to "Take the Tour". Every page basically ends up on the sign up page, so therefore people have two options, close the website or sign up. The only reason that someone wouldn't sign up is that they are not interested in using the app. Therefore with that clear choice in mind, we get a pretty good percentage that do end up deciding to sign up and use the app.

How did you figure out these principles?

The way that we learnt those principles is purely by trial and error. We have tried 30 day trials, we have tried having just a landing page and no Tour, we have tried really clear and bold headings on the landing page (as you see), and more long-winded explanations of the app, we have tried different pricing and tried ultimately making the app completely free. So its only by experimentation that we have learnt those lessons.

One thing that we don't do on Invoice Bubble that we DO do on Project Bubble (the bigger brother app) is to show a video. I would say the most important thing when designing a good landing page is to be really clear about what the product offers, have clear calls to action (as you see on Invoice Bubble), but also show off the product in a video and give your users NO excuse not to click on the video. A human voice, visuals and music can do so much for your conversion rate than any ordinary text could ever do. When we put a video on Project Bubble it almost doubled our conversion rate, so we might do the same thing for Invoice Bubble in the future.

Great insights Stu! Thanks for sharing. 

Stu Green is the managing director of Haloweb Ltd, a UK based web application development company who currently have 3 apps: Project Bubble (project management for small businesses), Invoice Bubble (invoicing for freelancers), and Halogy (a white label, easy-to-use CMS for agencies).

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Good landing page principles are good UX principles

July 8, 2010 in Landing Pages

If you haven't seen the new Think Vitamin Membership offering from Carsonified, and you're a web developer of any kind, it's worth checking out. Below I've embedded one of their free videos (most are behind a pay wall) that does a great job of explaining some of the principles behind a proper landing page. They don't use that exact language, but you'll see the familiar principles at play. Enjoy.

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A few landing page principles

July 6, 2010 in Landing Pages

Don't over-complicate things, a successful landing page is simple and focused. 

When visitors land on your page, they have a few questions in mind, and your landing page should answer them.

1. Does it offer what I need?
2. What does it look like?
3. How much does it cost?
   
   And before they act, they also want to know:
4. Can I trust you?

Finally, they need a way to convert. This should not be hard to find, do, or figure out. 

A old designer trick that works well here is to sit back and squint your eyes at your landing page and see if it's obvious how to act. I've taken a few successful landing pages with different conversion methods, and done some of that work for you to illustrate you what I mean. As you look over these page screenshots, is it obvious how to convert?

 
 

 

 

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Defining a "successful" landing page

July 2, 2010 in Landing Pages

This one is simple. The metric that matters when defining a "successful" landing page is profitability. You need to make more than you spend to bring the traffic. If you're spending X to get traffic, and you're profiting X-plus-anything after the conversion, you're successful. If not, you aren't. 

This might require a 25% conversion rate, or it might work with a 1% conversion rate. 

 A couple of examples of a successful landing page:

• You are running an AdWords campaign, and you pay $1.00 per click and you have a 1% conversion rate. Your offering costs $150. Assuming you have less than $50 in labor and other costs associated with a conversion, you're profitable and have a successful landing page at a 1% conversion rate.
   
• You are giving way an eBook full of great, useful information. In the eBook you establish yourself as an expert. 25% of those who land on your page click the link and download your book. Of those who download the eBook, 0.2% (1 in 500) hire you to consult. You make $200/hr consulting and a typical gig is 25 hours. You're not spending anything explicitly to gain traffic, but you're hustling to spread the word using social media.
  
  Each month you get 4,000 visitors to your landing page (giving away 1,000 eBooks). That translates to two consulting gigs, or $10,000 which is enough to cover your overhead with enough left over to live the way you'd like. You're profitable at a 25% conversion rate.

(btw, do you have a successful landing page? You should share it with us). 

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I need your help - seeking successful landing pages

July 1, 2010

One of the most challenging aspects of web-based marketing is creating a landing page that converts well. Most web-oriented entrepreneurs find themselves intensely interested in learning what works and what doesn't because a good landing page often tips the scales toward success or failure. 

Of course one solution won't work for all applications, but there are principles we can apply, and examples we can learn from. I'm going to touch on some principles in an upcoming post, but I'd like to share some of your proven examples too.

If you have a successful landing page, and are willing to share how you created it, why it's successful, and share some stats to back it up - please drop me a note (email link over in my sidebar, or find me on Twitter.) I'll select some of those and share their story here on WorkHappy.net so we can all learn together.

Don't be shy.

-Carson

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Founder of Threadless keepin’ it real

June 7, 2010 in An interview

This interview with Jake Nickell is a joy to watch. And an inspiration. He’s the founder (and subsequent millionaire) of the ingenious threadless.com. Tune in to hear great marketing ideas and other inside scoop. It should get your wheels turning. After watching the below intro, click through to view the various parts, it’s about an hour.

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Shopify featured (briefly) on 37signal's "profitable and proud" series

June 3, 2010 in A blog post, An interview

Over on the 37signals blog they've started a "Profitable and Proud" series where they highlight companies who've bootstrapped to profitability with revenues over $1mil. They started last week with a WH favorite, Campaign Monitor, then today (before revoking the "P&P" status) they profiled Shopify (another fav). 

Here are the gems I found from today's interview:

This comment surprised and intrigued me:

Our hiring is based on the assumption that there are fundamentally two groups of people in the tech industry: there are left brained science type programmers who can write amazing amounts of complicated code with ease; and then there are the right brained creative types. While left brained programmers may be 2-3x as fast when writing code, the right brained programmers can use their creativity to come up with elegant solutions that only require 1/5th of the work. Based on this understanding, we hire the creative types.

And this struck me as a great litmus test for new offerings/features:

When you build your product ask yourself “What do most of your customers need most of the time?” We test any idea we have against this simple sentence and if it doesn’t check out we don’t add it to Shopify.

I really look forward to more from this series.

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Happy Quote (on being unbeatable)

March 15, 2010 in Happy Quotes

Long ago we abandoned the idea of having a life’s work, a calling; those that still do their work from that sense of calling or vocation, will be unbeatable.

- David duChemin, world & humanitarian photographer, best-selling author

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Happy Quote (on pricing and service)

July 12, 2009

Poor quality is remembered long after low prices are forgotten.
(via @jasonfried)

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Clicky Web Analytics (GetClicky.com)

June 8, 2009 in 5 out of 5 stars, Analytics

What is it?

Clicky Web Analytics: A web analytics system (i.e. a web stats program).

Who makes it?

Roxr Software Ltd.

Why is it the killerest?

I remember when Google Analytics (GA) came on the scene, and for free, I thought "there goes every single web analytics company, it's over." And to a degree, I was right. I don't think there are any web analytics offerings that existed before GA came out that haven't lost crippling market share to GA.

But in an instructive (and inspiring) move – the Roxr folks found a way to create something that is more in touch, more contemporary, more interesting, and ultimately (yes I’m going to say it) better than Google Analytics.

Of course you can always use both. I’m doing that – but I virtually never look at my GA reports anymore, like an addict I return at my Clicky reports.

I won’t go into detail on all the juicy Clicky features here – you can see those on their site. But I will outline why I think they’re succeeding, and why I’m such an enthusiastic fan.

Clicky gives you a raw, intimate, personal connection to your web traffic (including a fantastic “spy” feature letting you know who is currently on the site, where they came from, what they’re viewing, and more) and they “get” the things that matter, and that we care about in today’s online market place (take their Twitter tracking features, for example).

But it’s not all stat candy, it’s useful stuff. Like GA they’ve got goals, and campaign tracking so you can use it with your serious online marketing efforts.

Plus the interface is a pleasure to use, and is very well considered. These folks entered what any sane person would call an impenetrable market, and they’ve made their mark. I’ve been using them for over a month now, and I can’t imagine living without them now.

What could be improved?

I have only one complaint - it's impossible to find pricing on their site. It's ridiculous.

How much does it cost?

From free to $50/mo if you really try.

Rating?

Reviewed by Carson McComas

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Using Google Docs to make a survey

May 18, 2009 in Hosted "Office", Tips

Did you know you can make a free, and rich survey or poll using Google Docs? It’s simple to set up, and as a bonus it drops all your results into a spreadsheet where you can slice/dice/analyze/chart/graph or whatever.

To create a survey, inside Google Docs go to New then click on Form as shown at right.

Go through and create your questions, set the response type (multiple choice, checkbox, text, drop down, etc.) where you’ll enter in the possible answers and if the question is required or not.

When you’re done, select a theme (the look of your survey) and save it and a link to your survey will appear at the bottom of your screen. You can then copy/paste that link into your website, Twitter or whatever to publicize your survey. You can also embed the survey right on your site if you wish.

The results are then fed into a spreadsheet that you’ll find in your Google Docs document area.

Here’s an example I whipped up for this post. Enjoy!

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