
One Person Startup  5 to 10 million a year revenues. - StealthSurfer
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117987775136211487.html?mod=technology_featured_stories_hs
======
andre
I think there's two hidden forces involved here:

1) It started out free when everybody else was charging something.

2) Social psychology, where people want to connect with other people, in
communication, physical and emotional levels, so without restrictions it
prospered.

~~~
lupin_sansei
Vote this guy up. 1) is a key feature of plentyoffish

------
StealthSurfer
If you believe SEO created any major site i've got a bridge to sell you. 100
uniques a day from SEO gives you 20 signups a day. How do you get from 20
signups a day to millions of users using seo?

~~~
staunch
Digg is mostly about SEO. They get something like 50% of their traffic from
Google. Same with Wikipedia. Those are examples of where SEO can be win for
everyone, good content that ranks high because of well structured pages and
relevant content.

How much is that bridge and where is it located?

~~~
byrneseyeview
I don't think Wikipedia's Google traffic is from people randomly bumping into
it; I get to Wikipedia through Google because Google's search is faster and
less finicky.

------
staunch
_"The site became popular in Canada and, later, in the U.S. Mr. Frind says he
doesn't know exactly why."_

He's being dishonest here, but if that journalist was worth anything they'd
have discovered he's an SEO guy:

<http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/how-i-started-an-empire/>

~~~
aston
For some reason, worrying about the Google dance to drive folks to your site
seems like not the coolest way to build a product.

~~~
npk
Really? What aspect of it is unappealing? Personally, if I were to go the
startup route, I would feel pretty successful if I had a salary of ~$6M a
year. I imagine you would too.

So, you object to his SEO work. Why is SEO any different than opening up a
restaurant at a particularly busy intersection? Seriously, I'm curious why SEO
is not the coolest way to build a product.

~~~
staunch
Because SEO is not a product. The way most people (including Markus) do it
it's all about gaming the system, tricking users, and generally being very
scammy/spammy with your site. SEO requires a ton of work too, and you could
take that same energy and put it into actually creating something new and
valuable. If you do it well the world is richer and so are you.

~~~
webwright
If you really believe that, you should learn more about SEO. A big part of SEO
is:

1) Making sure search engines can find and understand all of your pages. 2)
Making sure that people want to visit your site when your pages show up on
SERPs. 3) Making sure that LOTS of people link to you and talk about you
online (the PlentyofFish guy has nailed this). 4) Assorted markup tricks that
help people find your site better. 5) Understanding what people are googling
for when they are looking for products/services like you provide.

If you think dissing SEO is taking the high road-- you're half right. There
are "black-hat" tricks that you should avoid. But throwing out SEO as
"meaningless if you have a great product" isn't taking the high road. It's
taking the stupid road.

~~~
staunch
I do agree. That's why I said "the way most people do it" and not all. When
people talk about building a site through SEO they're almost always talking
about those black-hat tricks. I'm all for the kind of SEO that Digg or
Wikipedia does. I'm not suggesting you _ignore_ SEO altogether. My point was
that SEO is not a product in and of itself.

------
ivan
Um .... PG was not right :)

~~~
lupin_sansei
Not right about what?

~~~
sabat
ivan is probably referring to PG's insistence that startups should have
multiple founders (preferrably two).

~~~
ivan
Exactly, I'm referring to that claim :)

------
sbraford
Article also fails to mention he got a boost from adding fake profiles (mostly
of women) early on.

A forum post of his asking about how to do this is archived on the net
somewhere.

... not that I've never done anything greyhat either.

