We did it back in 2002, but here is how we’d do it again in 2008 on a shoe-string, bootstrap or sandal-thong budget.

Let’s assume you are starting a company because you’ve either been laid-off, had it with the boss or decided to pursue your dreams. My guess if you are like most Americans then you likely won’t be able to give more then $1,000 to the cause. Let’s be real, you are likely not going to receive a bank loan anytime soon.

1st.
Pick a company name and register your business with your State’s Secretary of State. I’d recommend using LegalZoom to setup an LLC, especially if you have business partners. The LLC let’s you get up and running quickly with minimal costs. As your business matures, then decide if another corporate suffix is better for you. You’ll be able to afford fancy lawyers at that point.

Cost $149

2nd.
Find a domain name. Good luck with this one! It’s the main reason why you see so many companies with funky, misspelled names these days. If you aren’t the most creative person use a services like NameBoy to toss around word variations. Once you find one which works, register it on GoDaddy.

Sure I’ve ranted about GoDaddy in the past but their service is still pretty darn good.

Cost $20

3rd.
Buy a Synology NAS with two 1TB internal drives. If there is only one thing I would suggest you spend money on, it’s this. The Synology NAS will give you RAIDed network file storage which can be shared with other co-workers as your company grows. It’s especially nice because the Synology NAS allows for FTP services for those co-workers which are connecting to you remotely. I’m figuring you haven’t closed on that fancy first office just yet.

Bonus: Synology can run FTP, SSH, DDNS and Apache so you can use it to run your web site while you start figuring out your business plan.

Cost $550

4th.
Using GoDaddy as your DNS server, point your email hosting to Google Apps and run your domain name using GMail. You’ll get a free email service which kick the crap out of spammers.

Google Apps also contains Google Docs and Spreadsheets but there is just something nice about having files on your a Synology NAS as opposed to in Google. Once Google develops a way for me to download a backup of the data then I might reconsider this.

Cost $0

5th.
Download and install OpenOffice. I don’t care if you are running Mac, PC or Linux. The OpenOffice team deserves a lot of respect for building a kick-ass free alternative to Microsoft Office and this desktop download won’t disappoint. It will allow you to create spreadsheets, word docs, presentations, drawings and simple databases. You might even consider keeping it as you grow.

Cost $0

6th.
Setup chat, AIM, Skype and any other of the plethora of instant messaging tools. This will help you resist the need to purchase land-lines from the blood-sucking telcos.

Cost $0

7th.
Setup YouMail. This service will give your cell phone some class. I’m guessing it’s going to play double duty between your home life and your new business identity. YouMail takes your cell phone voicemails and emails them to you as MP3s. It also let’s you personalize the voicemail greetings so you can filter the call for a more professional greeting depending on which client or prospect is calling in. Goodbye generic voicemail messages!

Cost $0

8th.
Purchase a real accounting package like Quickbooks. Yes, I know there are tools like BlinkSale and others which you can generate invoices with, but Quickbooks is time-tested and at the end of the year your accountant will thank you.

Cost $180

9th.
Lastly, use BaseCamp to setup a collaborative environment between your internal team and your customers. BaseCamp is free to manage your first project on, after that you’ll have to pay a minimal fee to add more projects and features.

Cost $0 (at first)

There, that’s it! This is how we’d do it again in 2008. The combination of these tools and services will give your new start-up the legs it needs to move forward as well as a polished image which will hide the fact that you are poaching wireless internet and working in a nearby coffee shop.

Good luck and don’t let this shitty economy get you down!

Google just recently posted an article talking about their opinion on dynamic vs. static URLs. In short, Google is saying that dynamically created URLs from a content management system, i.e. URLs that contain information talking to a database such as:

/media_review.php?user_id=25&article_id=315

should be left as is instead of rewriting them to look cleaner (static):

/media-review/bruce/dnc-ratm-concert/

Here’s a direct quote from their blog post on the topic:

Does that mean I should avoid rewriting dynamic URLs at all?
That’s our recommendation, unless your rewrites are limited to removing unnecessary parameters, or you are very diligent in removing all parameters that could cause problems. If you transform your dynamic URL to make it look static you should be aware that we might not be able to interpret the information correctly in all cases… …if you’re using URL rewriting (rather than making a copy of the content) to produce static-looking URLs from a dynamic site, you could be doing harm rather than good.

The problem is that Google seems to be making a recommendation on what is best for their search engine crawling and not what is best for the user or web usability in general. There is no debate, URL rewriting makes websites easier to use. It makes people understand what they will be looking at when they visit a link, and in general provides clearer information than dynamic URLs. For instance, here on our blog you can see all of my posts by going to http://blog.imulus.com/bruce the url is clear and easy to understand. If you want to see all my posts for a certain category you can do this http://blog.imulus.com/bruce/css. This functionality makes logical sense. Websites with extremely complicated URL calls can utilize rewriting to help their viewers better understand where they are on the site. And in regard to marketing materials — the time I see a company willing to use a url with ?id=237 at the end for a marketing or advertising campaign will be my first.

The fact is this, URL rewriting is an extremely useful tool (ironically Google’s blog post about dynamic rewrites uses rewriting for the URL). And while certain rewrite schemes may hide data that Google would like to parse, that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t use rewriting. The idea that a usable standard should be changed just to make Google’s web crawling better is ludicrous. Google throughout their history of search has continuously accommodated for changing website methods. By stating that URL rewrites are improper Google is taking a strike at one of the best standards to come out of Web 2.0. They’re suggesting a machine’s readability is more important than a human’s. And guess what: they’re dead wrong.

Right on the heels of my Quantcast posting; I’ve decided to give Quantcast some respect for helping me figure out which of the microblogging services are on the rise. My gut told me Twitter and it looks like my gut was correct.

Initially I thought this chart was showing me the rise in interest in Twitter and the adoption of it by so many new users. However, ff we make this chart relative it even suggests that Pownce and Jaiku are loosing steam / users.

Is there anything wrong with Pownce and Jaiku? Jaiku yes, Pownce not at all. Jaiku was solid before Google acquired them but it has taken forever for Google to re-open Jaiku for the general public. Pownce on the other hand is a solid service and sometimes seems easier to use and more reliable then Twitter. Kevin Rose and gang are no strangers to high-use sites and I believe Pownce will compete better with Twitter over time.

Based on the few examples I’ve looked at, not very!

Site A: Enterprise Class / Fortune 1000 Web Site
This comparison shows Quantcast ESTIMATES in green, versus the ACTUALS in WebTrends. Both measures track “VISITS”. This is important because the default for Quantcast is “PEOPLE”. I still haven’t figured out the difference between the two. The variation between the two sets of data is significant and the traffic pattern seems inverted.

Site B: Regional Business Information Site
This comparison is between Quantcast ACTUALS in green and Google Analytics ACTUALS in orange. Again, we are tracking Google Unique Visitors against Quantcast Visits. Another important note is that when actual data is pulled in Quantcast you’ll see separate tracking for US vs Global. Since Google doesn’t distinguish, we’ll focus on the global on both.


Site C: National Ecommerce Site
In this example Quantcast faired to be a bit more accurate. I compared Quantcast People (ESTIMATED) with Google Absolute Unique Visitors and the results were a bit more accurate.


Trend Overview
These graphs below were interesting to me because of the traffic discrepancy despite both sites utilizing tracking codes. Both of these graphs are pulled from Site B. Google’s Max is 206 VISITORS per day, whereas Quantcast is showing about 330 VISITORS.

Google Analytics

Quantcast Visits

Summary
I think Quantcast is an excellent tool; however you should proceed with caution when using the analytics obtained from both it’s estimates and actuals. It is important to note that both measures are benchmarking Quantcast against WebTrends and Google Analytics; however both of these tools have been used for many years and are fairly trusted. I’m not sure I’m ready to fully trust in Quantcast. But I’m very open to differing opinions on this.

Yes, you can track file downloads with Google Analytics. Although it doesn’t automatically give you that capability by just dropping in the Google Analytics Code, here is a simple method to add that tracking ability. For each file that you want Google Analytics to track, you need to create a “virtual page” using the pageTracker function in each file HREF in your site.

Example:
If you site has a PDF called financial-report.pdf and the link is
<a href="/files/financial-report.pdf">Financial Report</a>
That code will need to be rewritten to read.
<a href="/files/financial-report.pdf" onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview('/files/financial-report.pdf');">Financial Report</a>


This works great for a limited number of files, but for sites which have multiple file downloads. You may want to try Brian Clifton’s JS Script.