A quick reminder that tomorrow is another Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast:
Location: Bistro, Etc. (1291 Avenue du Mont-Royal, E.)
Time: 9am (to 11am)
RSVP: Not required
I created a Facebook group for the meetup, and the events will be managed via Facebook.
See you tomorrow.
It’s simple really: Happy customers will buy more from you and tell more people about you. You want customers buying more and telling more people about you. You want happy customers.
So how do you get happy customers?
For any entrepreneur starting a web business this is a critical question. If you’re building a web application for consumers you’re probably thinking, “I’ll give it away for free and sell advertising.” So be it. As much as I dislike that model, it’s the de facto one for consumer web apps. For business-to-business web applications, the model should be different. And I’m a strong believer in what the guys at 37Signals espouse, which is very simply, “charge for your web apps.”
But what should you charge?
MindValley is a San-Jose based company run by Vishen Lakhiani and Mike Reining. Yesterday, they launched SocialRank, along with 30 niche websites. The websites run the gamut of possible content, from more obvious niches like gadgets (GadgetRoll.com) and celebrity news & gossip (GossipStrip.com) to the more obscure, including MathBloggers.com, ChallengeReligion.com (for atheists), BikingCircle.com, TheLibraryShelf.com (hot stories from librarians?!?!) and KnittingFriends.com.
I’m particularly interested in StartupSignal.com because it’s focused on entrepreneurship and startups. But they’re also launching a number of related sites that tie very well into this blog, including: ProductivityZen.com, MarketingLens.com and MightyBlogger.com.
The folks at MindValley asked me to participate early on with StartupSignal and vote for my favorite startup-related blogs. As a result, I was able to interview Vishen Lakhiani about SocialRank, how it works, what their plans are for taking over the niche blog aggregation world and a bit more. The interview follows.
The biggest downfall of anyone getting involved in social media and social networking is the Social Media Scoreboard.
The Scoreboard is a master seducer. It whispers temptingly in your ear, “You need more friends. Add more friends. More, more, more.”
What the Scoreboard fails to tell you is that it could care less what you do with those friends, as long as you’re piling them up.
I'm Benjamin Yoskovitz, CEO & Co-Founder of Standout Jobs. I've been an entrepreneur in the Web for 10+ years, with a particular focus on blogging and social media for the last two. This blog covers my topics of interest, including startups, entrepreneurship, business, blogging and social media. You'll also find content on personal development, productivity and marketing.
