

Lessons Learned After Year One As a Startup Founder - derekflanzraich
http://www.derekflanzraich.com/2012/04/lessons-learned-year-one-startup-founder/

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freshfey
I met Derek when I was on vacation in NYC last summer. He took the time to
meet with me (a nobody who he just "knew" from twitter) and explained me the
big vision behind Greatist. He's crazy passionate and not afraid to make
mistakes (which this article shows perfectly.). It's been awesome to see him
talk to the "big guys" in the fitness industry all of a sudden. This shows,
once again: Hard work pays off, people. Go Derek & go Greatist! :)

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derekflanzraich
Thanks Fey-- means a lot.

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sparknlaunch12
Absolutely great story and thanks for sharing. This sort of sharing is
invaluable for those trying to start something.

Nice site and I can see why it has gained so much traffic. The biggest
question is - how did you get this traffic?

Have you paid for any advertising? How much is driven from advertising or
organic growth?

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derekflanzraich
Thanks-- and glad you found it valuable!

Our growth has been nearly entirely social, with the 60% driven by sites like
Pinterest, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, & Twitter. The rest mostly comes
from our syndication partnerships. Outside of some free trials from Google
Adwords, we've never paid for any visitors... and we've never been covered by
any major outlet either. We've grown 35% on average each of the last 5 months
& it's all organic.

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sparknlaunch12
Pretty impressive. Is your social driven traffic via your own profiles on
these sites or users/readers?

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derekflanzraich
Mix of both, we've got some pretty epic profiles-- but the majority comes from
others sharing our stuff w/ their friends. Strong believer in this as a trend
(Buzzfeed talks about this, too:
[http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/content-shared-close-
fr...](http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/content-shared-close-friends-
influencers/233147/))

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rollypolly

      4. Surround yourself with friends who will remind you
      you’re awesome when you need it & shit on you when it’s
      time.
    

I hate it when my friends go out of their way to say nice things about my
work. They do that because they know much effort I put into my work, and they
don't want to make me feel bad.

But this is counter-productive. You're not helping me if you don't point out
what can be improved!

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CompiledCode
Exactly. Recently I asked a friend to check out a site I just uploaded, he
sent me some nice compliments. Later I realized that on IE (which he uses) the
layout was all off.

I need to find some meaner friends.

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mhurron
You need honest friends. I looked at a little iOS game a friend of mine was
doing. I told him what I like about it. I also told him everything I thought
was wrong about it. He was asking me for honest feedback so I gave it.

I didn't have to be mean about it, just clear and straight forward. "I don't
like the way this works because ..." "I don't like the way this looks because
..."

Real feedback is much more helpful.

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hsuresh
Thanks for sharing your lessons. The biggest takeaway for me is this:

> Literally schedule in specific time to think & be creative– you need it.

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AznHisoka
Are you planning to partner with a larger conglomerate like Everyday Health to
make money through advertising, or you plan to build your own sales team?

Also, do you have any plans to increase engagement in your site? I envision
the number of page views per visitor is 2-3 or so?

Lastly, how would you remain sustainable if Google one day decided to penalize
you for whatever reason?

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derekflanzraich
Thanks for reading-- we're actually currently partners w/ Everyday Health for
advertising & have no plans to build out a major sales team in the near
future. We're hoping to build a business that isn't driven by ad sales, but
instead driven by guiding people to products, tools, and services that are as
high-quality as our content & will help them achieve their goals.

In terms of engagement-- we have a lot on the way. Right now our focus has
been purely to build the highest-quality brand equity and an audience. We've
got a 26% return rate, so think we're doing something right so far-- though
obviously there's a long way to go and a lot more to do.

Our traffic is currently less than 6% driven by Google search-- but we're
already ranking for some pretty awesome terms ahead of some classic
incumbents. We believe we're writing among the highest-quality content in the
space already (every fact cited by a PubMed study, every article approved by
multiple experts) & that if we keep consistently doing that and people keep
returning & noticing that we likely won't penalized by Google in the future.
My take at least!

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draggnar
_Guiding people to products, tools, and services that are as high-quality as
our content & will help them achieve their goals_

So, advertising?

edit: also, what are your sources of traffic if only 6% google? I mean, is it
diversified or all coming from a big single non-google?

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derekflanzraich
Ha-- nope, apps, subscription services, etc...

Re: traffic, more on it in the comment below, but more than 60% is driven by
social.

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sixQuarks
wow, up to 800k visitors per month after only 1 year? Impressive! How are you
getting most of your traffic, if you don't mind me asking.

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derekflanzraich
Check some of the answers above-- thanks for reading!

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cullenking
Any plans on adding additional traffic drivers beside content, such as
interactive fitness tools?

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derekflanzraich
Oh yeah. Stay tuned! :)

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cullenking
Nice. If you ever want to explore drop-in route planning using maps (OSM
and/or google), as well as activity tracking using GPS data, we have an
extensive javascript API to interact with our service. Basically, we handle
everything complicated, and it's just a matter of JS developers and designers
making it nice on your front end.

