

31 days, 120,000 hits, and $462 in revenue. The Startup Foundry’s story. - g0atbutt
http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/16/31-days-120000-hits-and-462-in-revenue-the-startup-foundrys-story/

======
kristofferR
This is great! I've been seeing links from The Startup Foundry a lot here
already and it's just been a month. Keep it up and you'll soon get even more
traction.

In November 2010 I discovered Kinect hacking and created a blog with the
latest hacks, <http://KinectHacks.net>, just for fun. Since it was the only
blog about the topic at the time it grew quickly and the in the first month it
reached 100 000 unique visitors and 300 000 pageviews. In the end of January
it had gotten over a million pageviews.

I eventually got tired of running it, it took time away from my real business,
so I sold it on Flippa.com for $12600 (<http://bit.ly/hBcQQb> , requires
login).

One of the best tips I can give you is to invest in a realtime analytics
service like Clicky, which I used. It's really helpful for immediately
noticing when stuff go viral and take action on it.

Another cool thing is that the new owner spent just $200 on Facebook
advertisements and got over 10000 likes for the group
(<https://www.facebook.com/KinectHacking>) in a week because of it. I've
always heard that Facebook ads don't work, but it surely worked in this case.
Just goes to show that you should never take stuff as granted before you've
tested it yourself.

~~~
michael_dorfman
_I've always heard that Facebook ads don't work, but it surely worked in this
case._

My own (limited) experience is that Facebook as can be very effective at
driving traffic _to your Facebook page._ To your website? Not so much.

~~~
seiji
You nailed it. Facebook ads work if you want to send people to a Facebook page
or Facebook game where people will spend Facebook credits ending up back in
your Facebook account so you can buy more Facebook ads.

~~~
ig1
I'm getting high-quality traffic from Facebook for a fraction of the cost of
Google Adwords, it takes more work but it's definitely viable.

------
DevX101
It's been a real pleasure to watch your work with Startup Foundry. I remember
when you first came and floated the idea, and the top comments were that
g0atbutt was a ridiculous name for a tech reporter. You ignored all that talk
AND GOT IT DONE!!

Talk is cheap. Anyone could SAY they are going to compete with Google,
Facebook, or the whatever the biggest player in the game is. It's a whole lot
harder to do it. You came out and boldly proclaimed that you were going to
start an alternative to TechCrunch and you are well on your way to doing this.

My one constructive criticism is that you spend some time getting more
comfortable with your interviewee and with yourself. I've never met Andrew
Warner but he's comes off as being very charismatic while being genuine at the
same time. I can't imagine anyone watching him and not liking the guy. Part of
this is probably his natural personality, but a big role is because he also
comes EXTREMELY prepared to his interviews.

I don't have any tips for you on increasing your charisma, but I will say that
your on air persona is an important part of your brand/product and there's a
certain something that's missing there although I can't name it.

I expect to see you reaching greater and greater levels each month!

Go GoatButt!

------
sammville
I am a big fan of TSF. REally love the interviews and would like to say a big
thank you for the inspirations. My only problem is it seems you are already
going the way of techcrunch. I would love to see TSf as a place for the small
start-up guy and not the already made ones. I sent a tip about my start-up and
even if a story would not be written about it, an email saying why you are not
going to follow-up on it would be appreciated. I contacted you several times
but was totally ignored..

~~~
g0atbutt
Hi Sammville. Just so you know it's nothing personal, I just get a ton of
emails each day from startups. If you drop me an email with a clear ask, I
always try to at least respond.

All the best, and keep kicking ass!

~~~
sammville
And that is the reason i love TSF!! i knew that was the case.. I would compose
a good and clear email now..

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zaidf
Let's officially replace the use of the word _hits_ when citing traffic with
something little bit less ambiguous;)

Hits _technically_ refer to each request for an item to your web server. So
one page view can have 10+ hits if you take into account that each image can
be construed as a hit. It doesn't help that some web analyzers _still_
continue to measure and proactively show hits almost as synonymous to a
pageview. It isn't.

~~~
g0atbutt
The title was referencing page views. Sorry for the confusion.

~~~
zaidf
No worries. Congrats on such awesome traffic numbers!

Of course, if you were following the true spirit, we'd see a hockey stick chat
comparing TechCrunch's launch traffic to your _projected_ traffic :)

~~~
g0atbutt
Ha, well played. In all seriousness I would love to see TechCrunch's traffic
in the early days. A quick search primarily revealed other startups traffic
after being featured on TC. Does anyone have a link?

------
davidedicillo
I'm a big fan of TSF, especially after seeing the quality of TC's articles
degrading in the past year or so. I'm sure it won't be long before Paul will
meet his goal.

------
roschdal
TSF is great, but how is it different from Mixergy?

~~~
AndrewWarner
Thanks.

I don't report on startups. I interviews founders after they built their
companies to find out what worked and what didn't.

~~~
iamjustlooking
Even if you were the same as Mixergy it wouldn't matter. There's plenty of
room on the Internet!

~~~
chc
Just so everyone's clear, AndrewWarner is the man behind Mixergy. He's saying
_Mixergy_ interviews successful founders, whereas The Startup Foundry is more
of a general startup info site. (I agree there's quite a bit of overlap,
though, and I also agree there's nothing wrong with that.)

------
atgm
This is a great blog post. The rules given are great for anyone who wants to
live a good life, not just startups and entrepreneurs.

