WhatIsThatFile.com – FOR SALE !

UPDATE: BID is currently standing at $500 (BIN PRICE REACHED!)
http://www.namepros.com/developed-sites-for-sale/172361-whatisthatfile-com-all-about-your-files.html#post1116508

BRING IN YOUR BIDS – SIMPLY SEND AN E-MAIL TO software@mittermayr.com
OR PLACE A COMMENT ON THIS BLOG!

BIDDING CLOSES WITH CONFIRMATION OF THE $500 BIDDER. IF YOU WANT TO HAVE THE SITE – LAST CHANCE! – BIDDING IS CLOSING AT LATEST BY TOMORROW (SATURDAY) AFTERNOON (or as soon as I got the confirmation of the $500 bid – so might only be a couple of hours).

HERE IS THE GENERAL INFORMATION

Alright, the site has been online for a couple of days and had more than 24.300 UNIQUE (I can prove it) visitors since 11th of February. Heck, we just finished Feb. and it took me some 15 days to get that many visitors. Quite good. Haven’t done ANY promotion lately, so daily uniques dropped to 200. Easy to double if you do some minor PR.

Iam looking for a competitive quote on the search engine at www.WhatIsThatFile.com

The database was built by a community and maintained by the administrator. It’s backed by the latest hype must-have: “Ajax” and has got it’s own API as well. Results appear immediately as you type. There are several options for link exchanges as well in order to keep a steady user interaction. I’ve been running the site for a few weeks now and it was digged a while ago.

If you go to Google or MSN and type: “It’s good to feel safe” you are going to see this site as NUMBER ONE search result.

It comes with full database content, all the necessary scripts + guide to set up the website on your own server and what’s best: A COMPLETE ADMINISTRATION SOFTWARE (running on your own computer). I am happy to send some screenshots of the administration software + statistical graphs.

It has got a CLOUD OF FAME feature, which is really popular. See yourself.

The package includes:
All necessary graphics
All necessary scripts and html files
All database content + backups
The administration software (specific for that project)
Guide on how you can setup this thing (takes 15 minutes max!)
The domain name
All rights including full ownership and copyright.

About future possible income:
The site gains a solid daily AdSense income, run a query and you
will see the ads appear between the results. I found a perfect way
of adding Commission Junction ads on the front page, by simply using
text links (clicked by almost everyone!). The site is unique as it’s the
only search engine for files allowing a instant ajax powered result.

It’s listed in several line ups of Web 2.0 application (see the most famous one on listible) and if you run a query on google typing “WhatIsThatFile” you will receive around 20 result pages(!) full of relevant content, all pointing to the site. From blogs, forums and directories.

Alright, that’s a good summary, let’s hear the offers, but please consider: This is not a baby thing, I expect serious offers only. 

 

News news news

First of all, I finally got two great interviews for you.

I had the opportunity to ask Alex Tew a question about his MillionDollarHomepage and he answered at the Financial Times website (http://www.ft.com/tew)

Here’s what he had to say:

Roman Mittermayr: “How much money did you spend initially to get this thing started? It does take a bit of financial injection to keep the popularity up until it reaches a solid, worldwide coverage – so I guess you had a PR agent working for you?”

Alex Tew: My initial outlay was around 50 euros I think; it really didn’t cost much to register the domain name and set up some basic hosting. I then re-invested the first $1,000 I made from selling pixels to my friends and family into sending out a press release in order to create more attention. In October I was approached by a talented publicist in the US, Imal Wagner, who suggested I write a book about my experience. I declined the book idea (mainly because I was too busy) but I hired her to help manage all the media attention and she also helped me create fresh interest in the states, which was in fact the last major country to cover my story. I actually went on a media tour in November to do a round of interviews there, and this directly led to more orders and the whole thing continued to grow. The underlying process was simple: the more attention I created, the more pixels I sold, and the more pixels I sold, the more interest my site received. It was a true snowball effect. I probably spent around $40-50,000 US on promoting and maintaining the site.

So as you see, Alex really did some good PR decision. It’s not only word of mouth magic, he actually did something to get that started and kept it going through all the life cycle of his project.

PageFlakes

Ole Brandenburg, a co-founder of PageFlakes.com was kind enough to answer me a couple of questions on their latest hit: “PageFlakes”. Some might have heard of it before, if not, “how was the vacation to Mars?” – It’s a pretty solid, online desktop system. Nonono, not another simple aggregator, not a simple feed reader or a task manager. It’s got everything you need, really. I love to see how such a “mushroom” like company got the project set up in virtually no time and started challenging Microsoft and all the other service providers – and definitely – outrule them! Pretty cool. Remember, it only takes you some 15 to 30 seconds until you’re setup to rock. Simply sign up for an account (it’s free – as in beer) and check it out.

Here’s a short intro to the interview:

Roman:
What exactly is Pageflakes?

Ole:
Pageflakes is a personalized start page (Ajax Desktop as some like to call it) that allows you to setup your (customized) content and news. We have already created 30 modules (Address Book, Todo List, Weather Flake, TV Guide, Map, etc.). You can read news feeds and setup the whole page to your liking. Its easy drag & drop functionality allow users of all kind to setup their own page. Signup is free.

Roman:
How did you come up with the whole idea?

Ole:
Content and news are scattered across the web. Information is available but it’s a pain to have it to look up 10 different sites and login 10 times to get all the news and information plus functionlity that you … [more]

[Check out Pageflakes] [You can read the full interview here]

Many many thanks to Ole for answering all these questions. I am going to interview some more high profilers soon, so make sure you check back regularly. You can also join our Naked Business board, which is free of course and located at:

http://ebusiness.vipedio.com/

That’s where I am posting the interviews and other entrepreneurial / web design related articles.

Many many thanks to Ole for answering all these questions. I am going to interview some more high profilers soon, so make sure you check back regularly. You can also join our Naked Business board, which is free of course and located at:- that’s where I am posting the interviews and other entrepreneurial / web design related articles.I also got offered a job at Skype the other day, woooho, what a great opportunity. I am not sure though, if I can get things in place to face that challenge. We’ll see, I am going to keep you posted.

Let’s close it up, but not without the mandatory quote:

“The reason they call it ‘golf’ is that all the other 4 letter words were used up”
Leslie Nielsen

Zinses

(Yet another) lovely example of 2.0Culture,

… went online just yesterday at http://www.zinses.com/ and couldn’t be any simpler. Even though most people tend to fire up their old ‘n dusty calculators, doing some proper interest calculations – it’s much more convenient to have a website do the thing. There are quite a lot of bank websites offering all kinds of fancy things, but they’ve never heard of 2.0Culture – while this service definitely has. Even though it doesn’t use Ajax (can you believe it *g* ?) and has no API (…yet, under development from what I’ve heard) – it still looks way 2.0. You, my trusted reader, already know why. He’s got the simplicity, the fonts, and the overall design just right. This gadget is no big business but it definitely puts light on the way to a whole new set of small yet highly useful utilities. I already foresee it implemented as a small widget on just about every business blog.

If you want to contact the author, simply go to our brand new entrepreneur board located at:

http://ebusiness.vipedio.com/

Oh, and many thanks to all who’ve joined my network through network@mittermayr.com
It’s still open for a couple of days, so please take the time and send me a quick e-mail about it (read post below).

Also, I urge you to send me your 2.0Culture projects in order to review them here !

Right, I thought I might end my post with a Leslie Nielsen quote:

Frank Drebin:
The truth hurts doesn’t it, Hapsburg? Oh, sure maybe not as much as jumping on a bike with the seat missing, but it hurts!

Let’s network!

Hi, good afternoon or morning !

I am back after a short time out here at Naked IT. I was quite busy pushing my latest project (WhatIsThatFile.com) to a certain popularity – and things are rocking again. Remember, you can get a free backlink from that site – just check out the “FAN” section.

But most importantly to say: I have got some grand news for you.

I thought, hey, a blog is fine, and although comments allow sort of a 2 way communication, I wish I could have it more interactive. And that’s what I came up with after a while of work:

http://ebusiness.vipedio.com/

It’s brand new – it’s super hot and it was only made for YOU. Yes, indeed. I had so many great comments by e-mail or directly here and I was really impressed by the quality and quantity or professionals around. I think, we should work together. Right now – you, me and the other 30.000 fellows. I have built that forum to allow you to present your projects, your ideas and ask other professionals on their opinion about advertisement, network channels, technology (ajax, php, whatever!) – just lots of stuff to talk about.

Some of you mentioned some really great projects to me and I had great fun checking them out. But I just can’t post all of them here in my blog as it would most likely turn into a huge link list soon.

That’s why I have created that board. Promote yourself and let others know what you are doing. Keep in mind though that I have an eye on all the posts and will remove those who have a bad ratio for promoting/giving feedback to others.

1…2…3 Network!

The other thing I would like to mention is the golden term: Networking. You might have wondered why some people actually manage to build up a site on Sunday, and have 10.000 visitors by Monday afternoon. It’s not always about getting Digged – and as you might know – being Digged is a rare happening – especially if you try to promote something that’s totally unrelated/uninteresting to those Digg folks. For that reason, I have created a brand new network. You will hear more about that soon, I thought I would make it an invitation only network – but that would be a bit unfair to some new readers here. So, let’s face it, it’s open to join for a couple of days and we are going to close it down after a while to keep the quality up.

Join by sending an e-mail to:

network@mittermayr.com

Please include your name, your profession and – if possible – your latest projects (links).
My incentive is to create a huge network of high potential professionals – including job offers, project of the week, stuff like that. I could write a book about the things we can do and achieve with that.
If you are still unsure why to join – you can ask me in person (or by public comment here) on the benefits or any questions you might have at: software@mittermayr.com

Oh, and keep in mind: I AM NOT GOING TO SELL YOUR ADDRESS, THE LIST WILL NEVER BE GIVEN AWAY TO A 3rd PARTY. YOU WILL NEVER RECEIVE SPAM FROM ME NOR WILL I POST YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS IN THE CC OR TO FIELD. I PROMISE TO HANDLE THIS AS 100% CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION. THIS IS NO ADSENSE NETWORK.

More details soon. Awaiting your comments and sign-ups.

WhatIsThatFile.com – A first review

Sorry for being late again with my follow up post to my recent article. I was quite busy lately with developing and growing WhatIsThatFile.com – as mentioned in the previous post. Believe it or not, it hit Diggs front page again – it was 2-3 days in del.icio.us popular section and for that – I had about 25.000 visits in the last days. It calmed down of course, I have a regular amount of about 1.500 uniques a day right now. It’s still great, considering that I am totally away from Digg and other snowballers. But once again, I learned a great deal about online marketing – or how to get to turbo-boost your project. Still, it’s a clear fact that those “boost-injections” are not of a long lasting nature at all – but applied at a regular interval – they will increase your user base massively. It’s quite interesting to see the stats, showing those peaks at days when the story hit the front pages – and the nicely shaped (“terribly shaped – in a business man’s point of view) reduction of unique visitors shortly after. But, after a few of those peeks, you will clearly notice the actual level of “standard” visitors is leveling off at a noticeable higher number than before the peek. Now, please excuse my terrible MsPaint work:

 

I think you get the idea. I have seen a more beautiful illustration recently somewhere on a blog, can’t remember though. Let me know if it was your blog.

So, as I am always eager to provide you with a personal benefit with reading this blog, here’s what I am able to offer for this week:

Try to learn the mechanism behind those aggregated Web 2.0 services. Only those can help you to turbo boost your projects – but take into consideration what I experienced recently and wanted to share with you:

1. People at Digg get upset easily. Promoting your own projects will most likely earn you a vast amount of unqualified flame comments. I had that with WhatIsThatFile.com. Someone started to flame about it and people simply joined in until they had enough “This is spam” clicks to get it removed. I know, this might sound as I had really “spammed” Digg – but I actually received -once again- an amazing count of Diggs (so a loooot people liked it) and even more: Look it up at del.icio.us – Right now: 508 people bookmarked it. That’s massive (for a projects that’s been online for about 4 days now). So try to have some people pick up your project and submit it to Digg – so you actually don’t spam the site. Listen closely, I mean: People need to like your site so much that they decide to write a post about at Digg. Ok, I think you got it.
2. How do you get people to Digg you? Look at: WhatIsThatFile.com – I provided two buttons which have turned out to be quite successful lately. One allows visitors to add the site to their del.icio.us booksmarks by simply clicking on the button – while the other button allows to post a story to Digg. You can’t make it any easier for your visitors to help you. Let them know that this counts more than any donation and they will help you.
3. The flow of hypes (crucial must-know fact):
   Usually, your story gets either digged or submitted to some other very popular directory. This should at least direct around 10.000 visitors a day (!) to your site (if it’s worth viewing it,  no AdSense niche stuff here, I am afraid). After that, if you are lucky (and did well with your idea), people start to bookmark your site at del.icio.us. Especially if you have emphasized the importance of bookmarking your site there. So, the second boost of magic is happening sometime around the days you get removed from the major news directory – if things worked out - people have bookmarked you like crazy – and tada! (fanfare here) – you are in del.icio.us popular. That’s impossible you say? It’s not – I did it twice – and I am no guru on that. The magic: I only tried it twice – so there’s definitely a mechanism behind it. It won’t work for quick “let’s make hell of a money with AdSense niche sites” ideas. You are banned from Digg faster than you said hello there. That’s the crucial difference with Web 2.0 – people are able to control and decide about your success – it’s solely about your quality – and not financial background. That’s at least a great thing. But keep in mind that this particular traffic won’t be worth a cent at all if people don’t decide to return soon. And even though there are ways to direct people’s minds to a small extend, you can’t make them love a stupid webpage. Simple as this. So first, get some quality feedback from chats, forums, friends, whatever. Let ideas flow in and decide yourself what’s best to add real value to your website. This is most crucial for everything.
4. Take my recent success as an example of what’s possible with very small financial and personal investment. Literally, I only paid those $8 for the domain name and about 25.000 different(!) people have at least seen my name and project for a short moment. That’s fully worth the investment. Even though I have provided all the content on my site for free (with very little advertisement) – I fully had my return on investment – and in other words: break-even within 4 days. Wohoo.
   If you are keen to know why I benefit to a great amount while providing a totally free web service – have a look at my business blog at: http://blog.mittermayr.com – where I will post a follow up article soon, especially on how to benefit from giving away things for free. Sounds crispy? Check it out. Soon at Naked Business.

I have so much to share with you about all those things that I’ve learned in the last days – I am really happy to have a blog now and being able to share this experiences.

If you are an experienced web-designer, internet entrepreneur with recent success stories to share – let me know about and I will get in contact with you to share experiences – and to post your project here on this blog (if I like it).

That’s exactly what Ole from the Pageflakes crew did. You don’t know Pageflakes ? Shame on you my friend, brush up your recent Web 2.0 bookmarks: http://www.pageflakes.com – This one rocks. You may have heard of Microsoft’s approach, trying to gain market share in the -currently quite hot- Ajax Desktops field by rolling out Microsoft LIVE (www.live.com). Well right, they got a cool name – but frankly, I even like the term Pageflakes better. And furthermore: Pageflakes just rocks in comparison to Microsoft’s poor implementation (guys, is this an alpha alpha ?) - Right, some of you geeks out there might just roll their eyes saying “oh god, not another Ajax desktop” - trust me, if you ever decide – ok I’ll give them another try (after Google didn’t impress you) – then, go for Pageflakes. You won’t be disappointed. You can even win an XBox360 there if you hand in a great frontpage - or so. See yourself. 

Are you curious on what’s going on at WhatIsThatFile.com ? – I did another highly important thing: I created (another!) blog – only for the site. It’s thought to keep users posted about what’s going on at the site and to thank them for all their efforts. It’s a great way to receive qualified feedback - which is ALWAYS worth gold.

There you go: http://blog.whatisthatfile.com

Just to remind you: This could have been your project. About week ago (or two?) I explained the details here at my blog and offered everyone the chance to go for it. I simply followed my own instructions and tada – that’s the golden result. So, stay tuned for more ideas.

Right, my next podcast might arrive a bit delayed this week as I am quite busy travelling around IT fairs. I got to get myself updated on hard-facts. Wooho. Go for it.

Let me know what you think, about this article and in general – the comments section is open for all your ideas.

Yours, Roman 

Episode 1 – Tiptoeing into Podcastwater

Right, I finally found time to record a very short podcast. In fact, it’s nothing I am totally proud of yet. I lack of expressing myself properly and mostly you will notice that there is not really much content inside the podcast. Anyway, you may listen to it to give some good quality feedback. My next one is going to be MUCH better as I am currently arranging a couple of interviews with other entrepreneurs to talk about their success, plans and hints on how to pop out those great websites and services. If you want to be “on the show” in my podcast, let me know and I will contact you for details. Quite easy!

Here it is: Episode 1 MP3 (~3mb)

I will add the appropriate RSS handling and stuff later then. I am just too busy right now.

The other two things I would like to point your attention two, are two babies I just released to the internet for some first real-(virtual)-life-testing. No, not literally “babies”, software developers would call them BETAs. I wonder what they call their babies then (v2.0?). Anyway you may like them, but what’s more important: FEEDBACK. Let me know what you think that I am missing there. I put them up in order to analyze the actual triggers why something rocks or socks (=sucks). And the more feedback you can give, the more WE can learn from it. I will keep you posted about it.
Here they are:

This is a simple, yet powerful typical 2.0Culture project (far from perfect!):
http://www.whatisthatfile.com/

And this one was made to create a community platform for FREE (as in beer) video tutorials:
http://www.vipedio.com/

If you are keen to know how I am planning to benefit from those two -non commercial- projects, you need to check out my other blog (Naked Business) at: http://blog.mittermayr.com/ – I will explain this in detail there soon.

I got some more things coming up, stay tuned and GET INVOLVED. I am happy to have a lot of good ideas around. So let’s create a blasting ideaplant here. Oh hell, I am freaking out. Anyone contacted the New York Times yet about my “2.0Culture” term plans ?

Keep it up guys (and ladies),
Yours, Roman

PDF available / Podcast

I have created two PDF files now for your convenience. I thought you might prefer being able to save these articles somewhere. So there you have them:

• 2.0Culture – In a nutshell
• 2.0Culture – How you can benefit from it

I am also doing some preparations for my first podcast here at Naked IT. I can tell you, the intro rocks, so I hope the actual content will rock as well then. For this reason, I am also looking for fellow podcasters. If you have some great information to share or want to argue or talk about your point of view – let me know and we’ll arrange a co-produced podcast then. I’d be eager to collaborate on this (no local presence required of course).

Oh yes, I am still looking for a job in New York or – “if you’re going to…” San Francisco. So if you run one of those great companies out there, or a friend of you does, woohoo – you just won a free beer (if I get the job, of course). So, feel free to hook me up for any details (software@mittermayr.com). Thanks.

Right, loads of things coming up soon – so let me know what else to cover in my very first podcast and in the next big article.

This is not a blog, it’s a culture.

More soon, at Naked IT.
Yours, Roman

A nice summary

As pointed out in yesterday’s article, the “WhatIsThisFile.com” domain is away by now. I am not too happy to see someone offering to re-sale it for any interested users. That’s a no no my friend – wrong incentive. But he posted a link to my blog, so I am ok with it. But for everyone else: It seems as you have to make up your own domain idea for that. Still – the idea is hot and ready to grab. Let me know how it is going. I will be happy to assist with any questions.

I see a varity of blogs covering my recent articles. Great to see so much feedback floating around. Most of them quite understood the point of it, so I will probably put together a list of those blogs soon, as some of them have some more interesting info on that 2.0Culture. I am eager to see your point of view, feel free to send me a link.

I have also set myself a new goal. I want the term “2.0Culture” printed in the New York Times or the FT, or, if these don’t work out, Computer Weekly is nice as well. Help us in ”designing” this new brand. 

I think the term is powerful enough to create a brand out of it, finally creating a distinction between “Web 2.0 / Ajax Technology” and the “2.0Culture” – hype itself. So that developers can be developers and hype addicts can be hype addicts, all of them living with their own, specific tag for it. This might have saved the world a billion of weblog comments, where one party attacks the other of misusing the term or so. Quite funny to see that, though. And at least, we got a term to help business angels explain to their fellow investors what their latest project is all about.

I will start to link up some nice track backs here, so let me know if you covered my articles and I will check out your blog – and if you are lucky – I will post a link to it here.

Also, I am still looking for tech-savy co-authors. Furthermore, a (e-)business related author is highly welcome as well. I want to create a number one information source of relevant (!!!) information for start-ups and people who got THE idea and want to convert it to a big bang success. So if you are keen to write an article, let me know.

More up to date 2.0Culture infos soon,
of course, only hot at Naked IT.Yours, Roman.

The 2.0Benefit

How you can benefit from the 2.0Culture

  

check out the HTML version (for easier reading) at:
http://www.vipedio.com/roman/blog/20benefit_full.html

 

As a follow up to yesterdays, quite well recognized article (towards a 1000 diggs at digg.com so far), I would like focus on the benefits for each of us that may or may not come with the aforementioned 2.0Culture. This is going to be split into a users and a designers point of view. So there’s a benefit in it for every type of reader. Great.

Designer’s benefit

It’s not always about money when we talk about gaining a benefit out of something. But wait, sure, money DOES play a role as well. So I’ll focus on both sides of the bill. First of all, as I have received a lot of feedback on my last article, I am happy to see that most people were able to figure out the actual reason for writing it. It was meant to show you how you can benefit from the ongoing 2.0Culture hype, without actually doing any Web 2.0 or Ajax at all. I very welcome the upcoming trend to focus on simpler design and clean layouts, but I also welcome the mass hype that comes wrapped up with the words Web 2.0 and Ajax. It’s no secret invention that was discovered over night somewhere in SanFran, not at all. It’s been around for ages now, but some dudes were clever (stupid) enough to keep calling everything Web 2.0 and praising Ajax to be the next geek’s Jesus Christ. Even though you can clearly define Web 2.0 and Ajax, you can still rock Digg easily by putting those words into your topic. Believe it or not, I’ve done a proof of concept, just yesterday. It worked.

So, to get to the point: How can you, as a web designer, software developer or service provider benefit from this hype? It’s never been easier than today. No venture capitalists, no Google spin-off, nothing like that is required. It only needs a twist of 2.0Culture mixed up with your useable content. Ok, to get this lined up, let’s invent a proof of concept. Anyone reading this is free to turn this project into a real one. Keep me posted on that.

Our project
Let’s say we want to provide a service to our visitors. Hmm, right, I got an idea: We will provide a neat “What is this file for?” database. So, basically a website including a big search box where you can enter a filename, just like “arp.exe” and then click a “What is it?” which is going to bring up a small list of results. These results include some 1-liners of information about the file itself, i.e. “This file is used by Microsoft Windows for ARP requests. It’s included with the default installation. Not harmful.”. This might be colored as well, so a RED background means this file is highly dangerous, a GREEN one means it is safe. Multiple results might be found for one file, so file sizes might be interesting as well. Still, not much of information to store. A simple table might do just well for that. Also, you need to think of a way to allow users adding their information about various files. So this is not a big thing as well. Remember: KEEP IT SMALL AND SIMPLE. And make it look 2.0Culture. Big fonts, big buttons, you got the idea. Read the 2.0Culture Design guide for further information.
Let’s call it “WhatIsThisFile.com” (still available!). That’s a rememberable name, as “Filr.com” was already given away Anyway. So we got a name, we got a project outline. Let’s do a time estimate:

• Design: 30-60 minutes
• Domain registration and webspace setup: 60 minutes max
• Programming: 2-5 hours
• Putting everything together: 2 hours

Overall est. max time: 11 hours max = 1 Sunday. Great. Just a perfect project to do our first step into 2.0Culture waters. Alright, some of you might be motivated enough to set this thing up now. Let’s assume we got everything already finished and setup at “WhatIsThisFile.com”. Right, now we need to add a very, VERY important thing to make this a number one hit. We need to add those two things:

• An API
• Ajax powered query routines

Concerning the API: This sounds much more complex than it actually is. You do not even need to provide SOAP and such things, it is totally fine to have a .php (or aspx) file, available to do some queries from outside with it. The returned data should be XML or simple CSV text. Call me an idiot, but I do prefer CSV for this case. It’s easier to implement. (This is going to spam my comments section again, oh god). Anyway, let’s just cope with that for now. So, we got a file called “api.php” located at “WhatIsThisFile.com/api.php”. Anyone can now use your service by simply executing your script from their web servers like this: “http://WhatIsThisFile.com/api.php?q=arg.exe”. Right, piece of cake. Ok, the Ajax part is up to you. It is in fact a bit too boring, writing a complete 1.2.3 tutorial for this. I guess you are clever enough to get this sorted out yourself. Do some Google for Ajax, this should get you started within some 30 minutes.

Perfect, so we got this thing set up. It is waiting for it’s users.

Ok, to be perfectly honest, you would have to spend another day or two on adding the most popular filenames yourself. It’s the boring part of the work, but hey, it is your actual content. So don’t try to run away from that task. Grab a pack of beer (or coffee) and a handful of friends and get it done in a day. Still, a piece of cake. Some of you should focus on trojans, virus and adware related filenames, while others should pretty much summarize most of Windows’ -Visible in Task Manager- files. That’s what most people will try to look up in your database. If “svchost.exe” is a virus or a standard, not harmful Windows file.

Ok, so now comes the magic. Literally every web designer is able to make it this far. There are no tough pitfalls in that project, so I think it’s an easy one to set up. But how do you get that huge amount of visitors on your website? I had 0 readers at my blog two days ago. Today, I have 14.000+ still counting at a rate of 1 to 10 per minute. Despite my design guide, I haven’t even got a great looking blog. But I have hooked this design guide that I wrote onto the number one hyped words: Web 2.0 and Ajax. People seem to go crazy with that. I mean, check out digg.com, TechCrunch, del.icio.us/popular. You’ll find these terms just about everywhere! That’s your chance. Right, great services and products will get popular easily and quick, you say. Bad ones don’t (without investing millions). That’s very true. But having your project hooked onto a hype makes it hell easier for people to like it. And what’s much more important to remember is: More users bring in more comments on your project. More ideas and suggestions. So that you can benefit from that and collaborate with your user base in order to take your project a step further, altogether. Oh great, isn’t that what we all want? A Wikipedia heart in every one of us. I love it.

Ok, so how do we get famous without living around the Bay area? Hmm, frankly, this is not too tough as well. First of all, summarize your idea into a small set of lines, make it sound like a great invention, but remember to keep EVERY SORT OF SALES PITCH OUT of it. I do not like sales pitch, so you don’t. Well ok, I made this article topic sound like you can earn a million dollars by simply reading it. Sorry for that

Ok, we have our summary, we have our project ready, we need to fire up the promotion engine now. First place to go: digg.com. Get your article posted there. Get your friends to check it out and digg you if they like it. Spread the word in newsgroups (DO NOT SPAM) and if you have blog, get the news published. Ask for ideas and suggestions. Let people share their ideas with you. Visit slashdot.org and submit your article. This usually don’t works but give it a try anyway. Depends on your project and idea if people pick it up there. Check out some of the number one blogs in the IT sector and contact the authors personally by e-mail. Do not spam their comments section, this is not nice and not welcome. Let them know about your idea and that you would be happy to have it covered in their blog. Suggest to provide a backlink from your site as well. This might also work for 2 out of 10 blogs (depending on your idea again).

Now, that we have done our basic promotional actions, we need to wait. Well, not really. Waiting is stopping. Stopping is not what we want right now as we are just about to get it going. What’s more to do? Have your friends (those that helped you doing the boring work) help you with the promotion, not to say – the marketing – of your project. Spider around all blogs, forums and boards. And always remember to post it where it’s relevant. If you spam around, people will notice it. This is like signing hell’s guestbook. Once branded, always branded.

Good, allow some time to get the word going. Just do always emphase the words “Web 2.0” and “Ajax” with every published article. And, check out my blog at http://blog.mittermayr.com – where I published some information on press releases (you can do this for free!). See here: http://mittermayr.blogspot.com/2006/02/magic-press.html

That’s going to rock your page. Trust me. And if you have forgotten to include some decent web statistic analysis program, god, you won’t stay online longer than a couple of days. Analysis is gold. Check where your users are coming from (keyword: Referrals) and how long they reside on your page. Try to find any problems that users might encounter with your website. Have a “How are we doing”-sort of section. Best for this is a blog, of course. Keep your users updated on what you are planning in the near future and let them comment on it. That’s all you ever need. A loyal user base is what platin is to gold.

And if you really worry about the costs of your project, a small line of Adsense links at the very bottom of your page will do the rest. Do consider a “Donate” section as well. If people like your project, this is going to generate a greater income than Adsense will. More on Adsense and why it might not work perfectly at an IT related website in my other blog (blog.mittermayr.com) soon.

Just always remember the basic, yet most important rules:

• Do not spam
• Do not try to screw things like digg.com or Blogs
• Do not fake
• Users decide about your success
• Design is crucial (see previous article)
• Say Web2.0 and Ajax
• Keep up the free spirit and avoid any connection to money making

Phew, whole lot of information in here. But it is going to work. Every one of you is free to grab the domain name and get that thing started. I might do it as well – just in case nobody cares to do so. Let me know how it is going with it then. I promise to cover it at this blog. A friend of mine is now also working at a typical 2.0Culture project. As soon as he is done, I will post a follow-up, comparing the project with the guides and it’s success.

Users’ benefit

Ok right, how do you as a user benefit from this hype? Just try to get a brief look at digg.com or TechCrunch.com to see the latest projects popping out of the mushroom heaven. You will notice quite a lot of extremely useful utilities. And I call them “utilities” for a particular reason. In our perfect world, we have our virtual office consisting of various tools put together individually suited to your needs. Imagine your are a project manager in the IT industry. You will likely need a todo list, a calendar and web e-mail. All these things are already out there, waiting for you. Make sure to check out Google for terms like “widgets”, “gadgets” combined with Web 2.0 and Ajax. This definitely gets you busy for a whole afternoon. And it might take another year or two for everything to get into perfection. But most likely these things are going to be subscription services, offering a fully online administrated virtual office. I know (to prevent some comments right away), things like this already exist out there. But they are still not at their perfection.

So everything you do to get into all those gadgets, widgets, ajax, Web 2.0, bla bla, scene – will allow you to act, think and use these technologies ahead of time.

So as I said before: Grab it while it’s hot. Only at Naked IT.

Roman Mittermayr

For IT matters: http://mittermayr.wordpress.com
For Business matters: http://blog.mittermayr.com

feel free to flame and send suggestions to:
software@mittermayr.com

60 minutes to GO!

Right my friend, it’s some 60 minutes until I publish the next big hit. So stay tuned and be prepared for a guide on how to BENEFIT from 2.0Culture yourself. I also prepared a whole project as a proof of concept for you.

60 minutes left. See you then.

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