

Tell HN: 360 Voltage is out of Beta (10 PRO accounts to giveaway to HN) - wmeredith
http://360voltage.com/blog/2009/11/360-voltage-is-out-of-beta-our-complete-set-of-free-online-marketing-tools-is-live/
360 Voltage is out of Beta, it's a set of online marketing tools that my agency envisioned for in-house use and decided to turn into a freemium web site along the way, which we now use in house (natch). To say that HN has been good to me is an understatement, it's an oasis of rational thought and discussion in a wasteland of online social media sites... (&#60;/digression&#62;)&#60;p&#62;So I've got 10 yearly 360 Voltage PRO account subscriptions ($149/ea.) to give away here to some devs who would really dig into the site, use the tools, and then give us ongoing feedback as we iterate like mad and try to populate the blog with useful content. Obviously, that's all unenforceable, but you get the idea...&#60;p&#62;Once again, I'm giving away 10 yearly pro account subscriptions to HN users to help us prime the pump on our freemium web site, which is a search marketing tool set called 360 Voltage. If you're interested:&#60;p&#62;1) Create a free account on the site. (360voltage.com)
2) Leave an initial impression of the site in this thread
3) Shoot me an email via wade [at] voltagecreative [dot] com with a sentence or two about how you'd use the tools. Also include your 360 Voltage account name in the email so I can flip it to PRO status on the back end.&#60;p&#62;I'll post, "Thanks guys, they're all gone" in this thread once they've been spoken for. (If I get more than 10 requests, the PRO accounts will be awarded subjectively/pretty-much-randomly by me.)
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wmeredith
360 Voltage is out of Beta, it's a set of online marketing tools that my
agency envisioned for in-house use and decided to turn into a freemium web
site along the way, which we now use in house (natch). To say that HN has been
good to me is an understatement, it's an oasis of rational thought and
discussion in a wasteland of online social media sites... (</digression>)

So I've got 10 yearly 360 Voltage PRO account subscriptions ($149/ea.) to give
away here to some devs who would really dig into the site, use the tools, and
then give us ongoing feedback as we iterate like mad and try to populate the
blog with useful content. Obviously, that's all unenforceable, but you get the
idea...

Once again, I'm giving away 10 yearly pro account subscriptions to HN users to
help us prime the pump on our freemium web site, which is a search marketing
tool set called 360 Voltage. If you're interested:

1) Create a free account on the site. (360voltage.com)

2) Leave an initial impression of the site in this thread

3) Shoot me an email via wade [at] voltagecreative [dot] com with a sentence
or two about how you'd use the tools. Also include your 360 Voltage account
name in the email so I can flip it to PRO status on the back end.

I'll post, "Thanks guys, they're all gone" in this thread once they've been
spoken for. (If I get more than 10 requests, the PRO accounts will be awarded
subjectively/pretty-much-randomly by me.)

~~~
mmorris
Hi Wade,

This looks like a good site. I checked out the Voltmeter test and it gave me
some info I already knew, but also some information that might help with site
ranking. So it seems like you're on the right track!

I'll definitely be checking out your site more in-depth moving forwards!

Btw, I enjoyed the little messages that appeared while I was waiting for the
report to run (e.g., "Web crawlin' ain't eeasy!"). It may be a bit trivial,
but I got a kick out of it anyways.

~~~
mildweed
its the little things we put into this that make it nice :)

------
bluishgreen
"A unique site analytics tool that can peek into your users browsing history
and tell you where else your market is gath­ering online."

How would you peek a users browsing history, and if you did manage it how
legal/unevil is that?

~~~
wmeredith
It's an old and well documented exploit that never has been, and probably
never will be, fixed due to it's intrinsic nature to the web...

We can't actually peek into anyone's history the way a layman might take this
statement. What we can, and do, do is load up a list of links and see which
one's have been visited. The freemium accounts just load up our default list
of the top 100 sites online and looks for hits. Pro users can customize their
check list to ad competitors and other URLs of interest.(See timdorr's
response below.)

A tool like this good for finding out if your users are more of a MySpace or
Facebook crowd, more of a Yahoo or Bing crowd, etc... for market research
purposes. If you have a PRO account and can customize your list you can ad
direct competitors and see which ones get cross-shopped with your product the
most online, etc...

Example usage: Let's say you want to run an ad on one of the top tech blogs.
You could plug 100 tech blogs into this tool for a week and see which ones
your crowd reads the most. Now you know a good place to advertise to get a
second brand impression.

Addressing "evilness" - I don't consider it any more intrusive than any other
type of analytics. And it's also completely disabled with Javascript turned
off. So, as always, users are welcome to empower themselves.

On another note, I've been waiting to have this conversation with an informed
crowd, what do you guys think about using this for the purposes stated above?

~~~
DenisM
Personally I place high value on knowing my customers and I would really like
a comprehensive solution to get that knowledge. To be comprehensive it would
have to include techniques to compel users to fill out surveys, participate in
usability studies and other direct interactions in addition to the passive
observance that you do. And yes, knowing the visited links is helpful in my
quest, it's just not the whole story. The way I see it, I want either an
ready-to-use building block to roll my own, or a wholes-story thing, but I
have no use for a wholes-but-different-story thing.

I understand this would be a different product/service from the one you are
making, but you may find this perspective valuable.

Also, lose the kittens. It's the wrong kind of childish.

------
newy
Thanks for sharing this tool. Turns out I had a free account already, must
have come up across it before. I'm particularly excited about Randal, which
solves a (relatively) simple problem (keyword monitoring) that I haven't seen
done well yet. The Voltmeter report took quite a while to complete, but other
than that the UI seems intuitive. Look forward to getting a chance to play
with it more, I'm working on the SEO efforts at Optask
(<http://www.optask.com>).

------
jbenz
This is... pretty awesome. I've only tried the Voltmeter so far, but what I
really like is the education that comes with the results. You guys have done a
really good job of explaining each factor in plain English. It's very easy to
understand.

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pkc
I love this site. Please think of adding catchpa for signup. Its very easy for
a script to scrape and create quite a number of accounts. Very useful guide to
improve search results.

* Voltmeter - How is the keyword targeting decided? I got unexpected keywords for my site.

* RANDAL - I used to check where my site appears for given set of keywords. It solves the problem automatically.

Haven't checked other tools yet. Will be doing it soon.

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rms
Hey, I like what I think this site is supposed to be. I think I broke it
though. I have two reports generating in my account somehow and so neither of
them are coming through.

Edit: OK, one came through.

~~~
wmeredith
Yes, we can run multiple reports, but doing so doesn't make the first one
complete any faster. ;-)

------
wmeredith
Thanks guys, they're all gone. I appreciate all the feedback and would love
more. I'll sort through the ton of emails I got and notify _everyone_ who sent
me an email of their account status.

