Micro ISV Digest

A weekly roundup of Micro ISV news, announcements and relevant blog posts.

News and Announcements

• Phil Steinmeyer is looking for beta testers for his next casual game.
• Alan at SpoiltChild is looking for beta testers for Toddle.
• Jonas Martinsson is building a newspaper style feed aggregator called FeedJournal. Take a look at a sample on his blog.
• A new site for Rapid Signal.
• Digg Labs launched.
• The WeblogWire launched version 1.1. Via their feed: a site called Yoosi.com will be sold by auction on eBay.
• A new MicroISV Show on Channel9, Craig Krantz talks about Project Glidepath.
• Benji zipped through the last 9 ideas and started trying to choose a winner.
• Andrey Butov released the source code and a post mortem for his first product, Chinchilla.

Relevant Blog Posts and Articles

• 17 pithy insights for startup founders from Dharmesh.
• Top 10 Rocketboom business notions.
• The 10 dumbest online business ideas that made it big time.
• Ignore the Competition from Creating Passionate Users. BoS followup discussion.
• More thoughts about competition from Slow Leadership.
• Patrick has some 10 minute tips to boost your conversion.
• Bob Walsh on Codesnipers, Why Open Source <> Micro ISV. And on BoS, a discussion of open source business models.
• The many hats of small business owners from Matt Inglot.
• DuctTapeMarketing: How viral is your referral marketing?
• The Long Tail: Dissed in WSJ, Defended by Chris Anderson, WSJ writer responds... all tied together courtesy of gapingvoid.

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• Short but sweet, Seth Godin on Belief. Slightly longer: Intuition vs Analysis.
• Dave Cheong: Are you a happy employee? and Matt Inglot: Is it wrong to be an Employee?
• An Amazing Customer Service Request, from Follow Steph.
• Scobleizer on the GYMAe developer wars.
• CopyBlogger explains why some people almost always write great post titles. Also, SEO Secrets revealed.
• Dude, Kyle's not here made me laugh.

Tags: microisv digest entrepreneurship startups

Free Fonts

Found a great collection of free fonts at Urban Fonts. A lot of variety, some articles about fonts and font histories, all in a nicely laid out site. Definitely worth bookmarking.

Tags: free fonts

Digg Labs

Via Google Blogoscoped: These two new Digg Labs applications let you watch diggs as they happen, visually. Cool.

Taking Payments

Patrick has one of the most interesting Micro ISV blogs at the moment... something about the experimental/analytical way he's going about it, and the transparency of the blog. Today, he posted about e-junkie, another payment processor in the paid download via eBay and PayPal sector. It's always good know about all the options out there and what kind of experiences other companies are having with them.

Plus it gives me a chance to share a couple of Google Checkout links from the last week or so:-

Google Checkout Reviewed on Conversation Marketing
Google Checkout Flunks on Kirb's Musings.

Update: It pays to bitch about Google, take a look at Kirb's schwag.

Tags: micro isv payment provider

Carnival of Marketing

I just spotted the Carnival of Marketing over on Jim Logan's new(ish) blog, Direct Response Works.

If you're not already following Jim, you should take a look over on his site. I've been following his blogs for a long time, and although he's probably a bit too direct mail focused for our online Micro ISV world, there's usually something worth reading.

If you have even the slightest interest in direct marketing, his "the letter" series of posts were great. Especially this one about trying to adapt it to small businesses. He just recently started offering a quick and simple copy review service and an Ether powered telephone consult. This recent post on increasing page views on his blog was also worth a read.

Bonus Links: GameProducer talks about making money from your blog. Matt Cutts talks metrics.

Micro ISV Digest

A weekly roundup of Micro ISV news, announcements and relevant blog posts.

News and Announcements

• Phil (Seartech) launched BudgetSimple, ran and hid from Benji.
• Aitor launched Forumtrackr, an enhanced JoS forum viewer (via BoS).
• PHDude launched PowerHires, feedback via BoS.
• Sourcegear released new versions of Teamprise and Vault.
• A new version of WebDialog from James Newton-King.
• Jeff Bezos investment for 37signals (bonus: Optimism is Essential).
• Open House at Joel's place on Thursday.
• The beer is on Andrey the following day.
• Planet Micro ISV moved, thanks to Ian's support.

Relevant Blog Posts and Articles

• How to develop Micro ISV software, by Bob Walsh on Codesnipers.
• Scoblizer remembers the post bubble pain.
• Open Source Reality Check from Rick Ellis. BugNinja on Open Source.
• Word of Mouth training videos, from Womma, via OISV forums.
• Dharmesh on Products vs Services. Also, are you making enough mistakes?
• How to have the "I want to quit my job" conversation with your spouse, on Escape from Cubicle Nation.
• Making Adwords work for you, from Patrick.
• Book Recommendations, Dharmesh on Eric's book, Matt Inglot on Bag the Elephant.

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• Slate magazine on The Wrong Tail, via Shotgun Marketing.
• How to give feedback, from Seth Godin. Also on working with a great designer.
• Independent Invalid Clicks reports via Matt Cutts.
• How to Rollout a Web 2.0 product, on BBGun.
• The Top 10 signs you're made to be an Entrepreneur.

Tags: micro isv links microisv digest

Bonus Digest: When Good Businesses Go Bad

In a BoS forum thread the other day [Failure of a Micro ISV], Joshua Volz asked for more stories about failure, more opportunities to learn from our mistakes. So I got to thinking, I've built up about 9 months worth of Micro ISV Digest posts, there has to be a few good links in there about failure and mistakes.

Micro ISVs throwing in the towel

• In April we had Cade Fassett calling time on his Micro ISV and ISV Diaries blog. The blog is no longer available, but luckily I save fragments from many of the pages that go into the digest posts... nothing too exciting here though, Cade decided he liked dealing with clients and producing bespoke solutions.
• In February, Mike [no last name, sorry] abandoned his Haja project. Again the blog is no longer available, but the main reason quoted for the decision was simply not having enough time to do justice to the concept.
• Matt Breckon decided to cancel his first Micro ISV attempt in May. Good old Matt has kept the blog up and running for the benefit of future generations: Cancelling PageTrack.
• Finally, Micro ISV coiner Eric Sink wrote about the end of his Winnable Solitaire Micro ISV experiment.

Articles on Failure & Mistakes

• What Not to Do, from Entrepreneur magazine.
• Why I quit entrepreneurship and got a real job, from Businesspundit.
• Bitter Brew... okay, it's about a coffee shop, but it's a great read.
• Why most businesses fail, from MarkTAW.
• Why Pyrogon failed, from A Shareware Life.
• Talking about failure, from Brad Feld.
• Even VCs make mistakes, the anti-portfolio.
• My own contribution, the Micro ISV Mistakes series 1-5, and mistake 6 on Codesnipers.
• Dharmesh, just this week, asks Are you making enough mistakes?

Almost relevant

• Michael Zammuto gave up his ISV to go and work for Microsoft.
• Who could forget the Titanic blogger.

Tags: failure microisv startup

Feed madness

I never realised how much I'd come to depend on NewsGator.

I only started using a feed reader at all a few months ago, but it's already a completely essential service. On Monday, it had some kind of meltdown and re-imported every subscription in my account, feed-by-feed. I had posts from months ago, and all the posts from each feed were grouped together. It wasn't pretty, and it certainly wasn't useful.

I've been hoping it would correct itself, but there's no sign of that yet.

I decided to check out Newshutch, after seeing the link on 37signals last week. It really looks the part, nice clear design, big font, plenty of ajaxification, but I had a few little issues with it. Despite an upgrade to cope with their popularity, it still seemed a little slow yesterday. For some reason, they show shortened version of some posts from full text feeds, and the login page doesn't seem to want to remember me, no matter how many times I ask it to. I could have lived with all that, but there's no way to view multiple feeds.

Viewing all the latest posts from multiple feeds at once is really the only reason I use a feed reader, so for now I'll have to leave Newshutch alone. Maybe I'll check them out next time NewsGator starts acting up.

UPDATE: My newsgator account is working again this morning (21st). WooHoo!

Micro ISV Digest

A weekly roundup of Micro ISV news, announcements and relevant blog posts.

News and Announcements

• James Newton-King released Json.Net 1.1.
• Johan Beyers launched the beta version of Abbackup, via BoS.
• Virtual PC is now free, and VMWare Server is 1.0.
• The weblog wire launched.
• 30 under 30 from Inc magazine.
• Benji is still banging out his ideas, but is revising his project spec.
• A Wall Street Software book from Andrey.
• Baby SpoiltChild.

Relevant Blog Posts and Articles

• 59 is the new 65 and other reasons to start your business Now, from Escape from Cubicle Nation. Pam was also the guest on the Lifestyle CEO show last week.
• Phil vs Ian: Don't quit your day job vs. Quit your day job.
• Wil Schroter: Spend more time doing big things.
• Less Choice = Less Suffering: Outsourcing Choice from 37signals.
• Capital Efficiency for growing businesses.
• GigaOm: Startups embracing Amazon's S3.
• Dharmesh: The Entrepreneurs Leap.

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• Mark Cuban: The internet is old news and boring.
• CopyBlogger, Do Keywords in post titles really matter? and Did you hear the one about the long tail?
• PicoBusiness and Rajesh debate the golden goose parable in one of the stranger blog topics of the week.
• How many startup employees to change a lightbulb, from Dharmesh.
• Ideas for free.

Tags: micro isv links microisv digest

Cheapskate's Digest

Not a new weekly posting, just a few links from last week that didn't quite fit into the Micro ISV Digest.

Juuso Hietalahti (Game Producer): 10 Easy Ways to Save Money

Rajesh Setty: Practice working with minimal resources

Eric Sink: The ONE key thing to know about negotiation

Learning to cut back and get by on less could definitely increase your chances of success as a Micro ISV. The downside is that it might make you, your family and maybe even your friends miserable, so you've got to strike the right balance. I quickly learned to live on very little, and I doubt that I'd have made it this far if I hadn't.

This post wouldn't be complete without mentioning Remain Frugal on gapingvoid.

More on MSN Adcenter

Yesterday it I said it was too soon to say anything about Adcenter & Overture. Well, today I logged in and tried to see how much I'd spent yesterday, which keywords were clicked, etc. All those things that you can see at a glance in an Adwords account.

I couldn't find it. At all. There's a bunch of reports I can run, possibly one of those will hold the answer, but it takes about 10-15 seconds to run each one, and I'm not in the mood for that kind of frustration this morning.

If anyone's using Adcenter and knows how I can quickly and easily see (across all campaigns) the ad spend yesterday, and quickly drill down to find out which keywords the clicks came from, please help me out here! All the easily visible stats seem to focus on today, and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to change the period.

Cue someone pointing out a simple way of doing this and making me look stupid, but I'd rather that than not know.

Update: I haven't found an easy way to find out the information, but the Keyword Performance report just about does it for me. Still, I'd like to be able to see a list of keywords and be able to quickly change the date range to see how each one performed... basically something like Adwords.

Tags: search marketing adcenter

Rebooting

So, the World Cup is over, and it's probably about time I got back down to work.

Over the last few weeks, I've released a minor update to Oriador, my staff scheduling software, and I expanded our PPC search advertising to MSN and Overture. It's too early to comment on the results. I've also been looking into Text Link Ads, both to run here on my blog and to advertise my software. I found out about them via Gameproducer's post, but I haven't made a decision yet.

Even though I feel like I'm just emerging from a month long football hibernation, it wasn't really that bad. I get up earlier these days, so I didn't have too much trouble keeping up with all the real work... it's just that there never seemed to be a lot of time left over for anything else.

Micro ISV Digest

A weekly roundup of Micro ISV news, announcements and relevant blog posts.

News and Announcements

• John Gunning launched BI Documenter.
• Neville Franks released a new version of Surfulator.
• New versions of dbdesc and dtsdoc were released.
• Michael Johnson is looking for feedback for ThumbBrowser, currently in beta.
• Ian Landsman announced his 9 month revenue stats for HelpSpot.
• The Supernova 12.
• Microsoft+Vista+C#+Glidepath = Free Support and Promotion... contact Michael Lehman if this might apply to you.

Relevant Blog posts and Articles

• Greg Moreno's Micro ISV Notebook look's like a nice new addition to Planet Micro ISV. Try: Don't confuse business with projects.
• A crazy million dollars in a month experiment.
• Making your product inspire the nod, from Creating Passionate Users.
• A lawyer's view of the EULA.
• Nice guide to Improving landing pages, via GBGames.
• Phil at Seartech experiments with Adsense... if only we all had 10+ years of focused traffic and content to leverage!
• Matt Inglot's series Secrets of Creating and Growing an online business.

Further (mostly relevant) reading

• Video via gapingvoid: Ben Hammersly at Les Blogs.
• CopyBlogger: The end of Adsense?
• Bad Language: How to concentrate on writing.
• Improve your life one step at a time, from Dave Cheong.
• The top 10 Funny Google news. Also on Google News, Newsmap is stunningly cool (although maybe a little hard on the eyes?).

Tags: micro isv links microisv digest

Micro ISV Digest

A weekly roundup of Micro ISV news, announcements and relevant blog posts.

News and Announcements

• Andrea Nagar released a new beta version of Direct Access.
• Jose released a new version of Procx.
• $500 Startup Blog: theWebLogWire.net
• Patrick McKenzie's Micro ISV Blog- Micro ISV on a Shoestring.
• You might remember DabbleDB from a digest in March, this week they found some funding.
• OISV added press releases, file hosting and PAD file generation.
• Google's Account Authentication API: login users using their Google account.
• Google Checkout. Why from GigaOM
• Welcome baby Landsman.

Relevant Blog Posts and Articles

• Seth Godin: 10 things programmers might want to know about marketers and 9 things marketers ought to know about sales people.
• Paul Graham: The Power of the Marginal.
• The Stormhoek guide to blogging on gapingvoid.
• 37signals: Growing in vs. Growing out.
• OISV, from concept to launch in 10 days.
• Dharmesh comments on the CouchSurfing crash.
• Also from Dharmesh, why students make great entrepreneurs.
• Quit your day job on Startup Nation (quick summary, it's easier if Oprah helps).

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• The A-Z of Professional Blogging, from Problogger.
• Do you make these mistakes with your blog? on CopyBlogger.
• The CellarTracker story.
• Finding Great mentors, from Escape from cubicle nation.
• The Independent Games festival and it's cash prizes might be of interest to any gaming oriented Micro ISVer's out there.
• Interesting forum discussion on the SMS space, some useful links.
• Fjax anyone?
• Blackmail 2.0: Etortr.

Tags: micro isv links microisv digest