From the category archives:

Start-up

Small Business Advertising In The 21st Century

by Graham Gallagher on March 4, 2010

digital poster

All business owners know and appreciate that advertising is essential for the success of their businesses, from the early days when store owners advertised their store in their local newspaper, on radio stations and in local magazines.

What was wrong with these methods?
Well firstly, once people have read the magazine article or newspaper, they rarely retain the printed copy, this on top of the costs involved with print advertising put an end to how successful this medium was for getting paying customers over the stores door step. Radio advertising was also expensive, but unlike newspapers and magazines they could not go online, like people who still advertise with magazines and newspapers, their ad can be seen online under the classified ads on the newspapers website – as most newspapers have their own website that has lots more content with more ads.
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Overcome Information Overload; Getting Things Done by David Allen

by Ahmet Kirtok on September 13, 2008

Getting Things Done by David Allen

Information overload is a pretty new term moved into our lives with the internet era. Especially if you are working online, you have to be on top of things all the time.

My regular work day starts with checking my emails and checking my stats on several sites. I have never thought about organizing basic tasks in my regular business day. Of course, for every project or a website we make plans, timesheets, we use project management tools, etc. But how about organizing the very basic daily tasks we do all the time?

Understanding and Accepting the Problem

Since the beginning of 2007, I knew that I was spending so much time on unnecessary things and tasks in my daily life. I didn’t know the solution, but I have finally admitted it was a serious problem for my business and for my daily life. Then, I started looking for a solution.
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How to Buy or Sell a Business?

by Ahmet Kirtok on April 12, 2008

You have decided to buy or sell a business, now what will you do? It is always good to know your options before buying or selling a business. Here are some of the routes you might take:

Market Research Before Selling or Buying a Business

When there are thousands of businesses for sale on the market, market research might be time consuming. If you haven’t done so, check out these articles from SBA (Small Business Administration) about buying a business, and these articles about selling a business.
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Free Advertising for Local Small Businesses

by Ahmet Kirtok on March 22, 2008

Free Local Business AdvertisingLocal businesses usually don’t have large advertising budgets. Large franchising chains, and brand names usually use their national advertising channels to compete with local businesses.

Internet advertising is becoming more popular for both online businesses and local small offline businesses. There are some quality local business directories online. One of them I’ve found recently is Kudzu.

Kudzu.com is an Internet venture owned and operated by Cox Search Inc., a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, one of the nation’s leading media companies and providers of automotive services. So, it’s backed up with a well known brand.

Kudzu is running a special for a limited time. They are offering FREE Premium listing through 2008. I have registered my businesses last week, and already started receiving some quality traffic. I wanted to share this information with my readers since it’s a great value (normally it’d cost you around $750.00).

Click to visit to register your business for FREE (No credit card required, nothing to lose).

Here’s how your premium listing will look like at Kudzu.

Premium Local Business Listing

Take advantage of this limited time offer and register your business for free. Every visitor helps for your business.

* Important Tip: You don’t have to own a local business to be able to register. One of my websites receives the most traffic from a niche local business directory site.

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True Entrepreneurs Learn From Failures

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 15, 2007

True entreprenurs love to take risk. Some do their homework better than others before taking risk. Taking risk might lead you to success, but at the other side, it might lead you to failure. When you read the success stories of entrepreneurs, you also find out their previous failures.

Why am I writing about taking risk, and learning from failures?

I have recently had some conversations with a few friends about starting a business. These friends of mine work corporate jobs, and always searching for opportunities to start their businesses. I have observed a particular difference in business perspective between them and myself. When they talk about a business opportunity or make a business plan, they are looking for absolute ZERO risk. They always mention, oh of course you have to take risk, but when it comes to reality, they are scared to take risk. They know it, but they don’t accept it. One thing I have learnt as an entrepreneur is “Failing is a part of entrepreneurship”. If you take risk to achieve big goals, you will not be 100% successful. You will fail along the way.

I took a risk, Failed, then what?

Always re-evaluate your business along the way. You will make many small mistakes, it is normal. If you can find out what you are doing wrong, correct it, and learn from your mistake, you are doing the right thing. Even if you fail, the key is trying to learn from your failure.

Never get discouraged

Keep your motivation at the maximum level. I set goals with daily sales for instance. If I can’t reach that level, I work harder. If I reach the level, then I set a higher goal. Setup your daily, weekly, monthly (short term) goals, even write them on a post-it and put it on your desk, wall, monitor. Never get discouraged if you can’t reach your goals, work even harder.


The Biggest Successes are Often Bred from Failures by Randy Komisar (8 min. video)

Click to Watch The Video

According to Komisar, what distinguishes the Silicon Valley is not its successes, but the way in which it deals with failures. The Valley is about experimentation, innovation, and taking new risks. Only a small business that can deal with failure and still make money can exist in this environment. It is a model based on many, many failures and a few extraordinary successes.

If you don’t like the idea of taking risk and failing, here’s a short but useful formula:

NO RISK = NO FAILURE

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Sales Pitch Video, Guaranteed No Funding

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 13, 2007

Ali G invents ice cream glove and goes out to shop for VC funding. This is hillarious, and a must to watch.

Look at Donal Trump’s face, he was kind of pissed with the whole situation.

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Digital Telepathy Creates Web 2.0 Startups

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 13, 2007

You have the great idea for a Web 2.0 Startup project. It might be the next Facebook. But you don’t have the experience to properly put a business plan, sales pitch for VC’s, or any development experience. You believe in your idea so much, you have the entrepreneur spirit, but no experience. What would you do?

[photopress:dp.jpg,full,alignleft]Duncan Riley from TechCrunch introduces us to the company which will answer your questions; Digital Telepathy. If you are an experienced entrepreneur in Web 2.0 field, you might not need a helping hand even though Digital Telepathy offers services for existing startups looking for advice on taking their business to the next level, but if you are new to all Web 2.0 thing, this might be a great choice for you.

Duncan Riley explains the 3 “Biz in a Box” Products which Digital Telepathy offers;

The concept is simple: Digital Telepathy offers three design my business options with varying service levels based on the length of each plan. The 15 day plan provides a wannabe startup with market research, strategic alignment, scalable revenue model, instruction manual for project completion and a concept summary delivered as a “Biz in a Box”. The 45 day plan offers (in addition to the 15 day plan) “initial buzz building,” and a range of design services including basic prototyping, usability testing, blueprints, concept mapping and other design services. The 90 day plan adds development services including full scale back-end development for beta release, front end development, private beta invites, feature development and more.

Prices range from $15,000 through to $250,000. Each project has its unique needs, therefore you will need to contact them for a quota. Below is a comparison chart for Digital Telepathy’s services:

Digital Telepathy Product Comparison

Check out the projects they have already done. Their work looks promising.

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Startup Weekend – How to Create A Company in 54 Hours

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 12, 2007

[photopress:startup_weekend.png,full,alignleft]Have you ever thought about starting a company within 1 weekend from concept to completion? Is it even possible?

If you try to do it yourself, it might be little hard, but a group of highly talented and motivated people might succeed. They are actually doing it.

Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, Startup Weekend is a concept of a conference focusing on learning by creating.

It is free to participate, and founders receive equal shares of founder stock of the company they create. 5% of each company created goes towards Startup Weekend.

It is so crazy, but I love the idea. I have no idea if these startups will live long, but who cares? It’s the idea of learning while you are doing it. You get to read so many case studies at school, at Startup Weekend, you will be in the case study. It never gets better than this.

Startup Weekend already got some national media coverage, and I’m sure will get much more.

Some of the news mentioning Startup Weekend:

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A picture from Atlanta Startup Weekend where Skribit.com was born.

Scheduled Future Weekends

  • San Francisco (November 16-18)
  • London (November 30- Dec 2)
  • Dublin (December 7-9)
  • Los Angeles (December 14-16)

If you live in one of these cities, and have a passion about entrepreneurship, you HAVE to attend the Startup Weekend in your city.

Big THUMBS UP for this brilliant idea ; Startup Weekend.

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New York Startup Interviews By nextNYers

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 12, 2007

[photopress:nextnyers_1.jpg,full,alignleft]We watch so many interviews of tech startups from Silicon Valley and CA. Finally, there’s a site for New Yorkers which will only interview New York Tech Startups, and it is called nextNYers. Being an entrepreneur living in NYC, this makes me happy.

About nextNYers
The hottest up-and-coming technology, new media and Web 2.0 companies are profiled on nextNYers: the new weekly web series that tells you which companies in the New York City area should be on your radar through interviews with their top executives.The profiles offer insight into their vision and industry, their competitive landscape and their unique abilities.

First Episode of Magnify.net CEO and Founder Steve Rosenbaum

nextNYers is in partnership with NY-based tech blog CenterNetworks, which will post each week’s show.

I will be watching the episodes at nextNYers each week, and will write about some of the companies. Time to support local tech companies.

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I was at Ad Tech NY Today

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 6, 2007

[photopress:adtech_ny.jpg,full,alignleft]I spent the afternoon visiting Ad Tech NY today. It was overwhelming with so many company booths to visit. I didn’t know there were these many advertising companies in the market.

My goal for this visit was to do some networking, check out the software providers for PPC management softwares, and meet affiliate marketing managers.

Most of the PPC Management softwares were for SEM Companies, but I have found a solution called Search Force which also targets advertisers like myself who manages PPC Campaigns for multiple websites. They were kind enough to do a detailed demo for me. I’m seriously considering this software now.

I have also met the CEO of a company called Hyper Bidder which has a unique ad concept. Basically, it’s an auction ad network where you bid for CPM by choosing specific sites for your campaigns, and your bid gets you the exposure. They have a patent pending technology and their slogan is; “The higher the bid, the more frequent the ad is served.” I’m definitely planning to give them a try.

Even though we are in the industry and we try to follow everything online, sometimes you need to meet the people face to face, and exchange business cards. You will definitely get some new updates from the industry by directly speaking to the company owners, and reps.

Here are the highlights of the Ad Tech NY for me;

  • Video, and mobile advertising is becoming huge. There were so many new companies presenting.
  • All PPC Management Software Providers use Trellian (The company behind KeywordDiscovery.com) for the keyword data. I have tried Wordtracker, and Wordze. Now it’s time for me to try KeywordDiscovery.
  • I did some partnership connections with some email marketing companies which was worth the time I’ve spent.
  • A few companies weren’t interested in providing me any info about their products when they’ve figured out I’m not the guy with million dollars a month ad budget. This is something I never get. You pay high rent for these types of shows, and you don’t even want to sell your products?
  • I have spoken with some affiliate networks and it was very helpful to decide my future affiliate partnerships. Affiliate companies are the friendliest.

Overall, it was a pretty good experience, and networking for me. If you want to improve yourself and your business, you need to attend the industry related events and shows. You might be surprised how much these events might help.

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