Photo by arquera

I posted last week about the enormous value of the information I received from surveying my DotNetInvoice customers through survey.io.

Today I want to ask you the same 7 questions, but in reference to this blog. Your answers will no doubt shape the future of what happens here.

You can answer anonymously at:

http://survey.io/survey/6c630

When I originally published Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide to Launching a Startup, my intention was to follow up the PDF and paperback versions with Kindle, iBook and ePub versions. That plan went by the wayside once I discovered there was no automated way to go from a Word doc to these formats.

After contacting a half-dozen ebook conversion firms I found a company that turned the Kindle and ePub versions around in two days, although the Kindle version required three rounds of QA over the course of 10 days before it was ready to be published. So 12 days and a few hundred dollars later I now have the necessary hand-coded files.

Kindle, Here I Come
So as of this morning, Start Small, Stay Small is now available in Kindle format from the Amazon website, and PDF & ePub format from the startup book website.

If you’ve already purchased the book in PDF you should have received an email with a link to download the ePub version. If you haven’t, email me.

The paperback version is also available from both startup book and Amazon, but buy it from startup book (you can pay through Amazon or PayPal) since Amazon takes more than half the revenue off the top. The economics of book publishing are pretty crazy when not selling direct to the consumer.

Speaking of that, the Kindle commission is 35% of the purchase price. That’s what Amazon pays me. Ouch! As soon as you price your book above $9.99 your commission plummets from 70% to 35% of the retail price. Now I understand why the big book publishers were having such a fit about Amazon essentially forcing them into this pricing bracket.

Bye Bye iBook
At this point it does not look like the iBook version will come to fruition.

For one, you need a Mac to publish a book to the iTunes store.

For two, the handful of iPad owners I’ve talked to indicated they use the Kindle app to read books on their iPad. Apparently, the iBook app isn’t that great and the iBook selection is small. Go figure.

As if this blog weren’t enough…

If you’re interested in hearing more of my rantings on startups, startup marketing, and even a few minutes on internet business investing, check out my two most recent interviews:

Inc.com
The Successful Soloist: How to Make Six Figures

TechZing
Rob Walling & the Micropreneur Academy

Also, if you read this blog via RSS and haven’t been to the actual site in a while, I’ve made several changes that might be of interest to you. They include:

• adding a press page (18 appearances so far)
• re-writing the about page
• revamping the right sidebar including new links to my startup book and twitter account

Keep your eyes peeled for a new post tomorrow morning. Should be a good one. I’m preparing myself for the flames as I write this.

I’ve embraced a concept that involves investing in websites like real estate. Not “website flipping” as the press seems to categorize anything to do with buying or selling websites, but taking a long-term approach to finding income-generating web properties and building a portfolio.

Think Warren Buffett’s buy-and-hold approach vs. speculation (aka “flipping”).

This is different from building apps yourself, and also different than Micropreneurship.  Micropreneurs tend to own microISVs, whereas this new concept…this Internet Business Investor might own e-commerce sites, ebooks, and AdWords sites. He looks at websites purely as investments.

This investor builds a portfolio to hedge a downturn in any one property, and to build a sustainable income source, since a single small website is unlikely to generate substantial income.

The idea is to “buy” yourself freedom to do what you want by building equity in web properties (as opposed to doing this through real estate, which is the more common path).

Interested?
With that said, and realizing this is not about building applications but solely about buying, rehabbing and holding web properties to build a passive income stream with the goal of personal freedom…do you have any interest in that topic?

The reason I ask is that I’m considering starting a separate (totally free) blog or podcast on this subject. If you are interested, please let me know:

I’ll email you once or twice as it shapes up to keep you in the loop. Again, I’m not going to charge for this.

After much toil, my book Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide to Launching a Startup is now available in paperback and PDF format at StartupBook.net.

A few reviews so far:

“Congrats @robwalling for “shipping” – I’ve started reading it, it’s GREAT stuff! ”
- Peldi, twitter.com/balsamiq

“[I] booked some time this afternoon and pretty much devoured it!  A great read, and I think you nailed exactly the right balance between big picture strategy and very specific and actionable tasks or resources.”
- Mark Roseman, www.markroseman.com

“@robwalling I’ve read only the first chapter and I think it’s the best piece I’ve read ”
- Akash Manohar, twitter.com/akashmanohar

“Started reading @robwalling’s book tonight. Got about 25 pages in, and I can already tell I’m going to like it.”
- Joel, Ross twitter.com/RossCode

“…an awesome combination of big-picture ideas with tools and tactics to make it happen.”
- Harry Hollander, Moraware Software

If you’re interested, it’s available in paperback and PDF format at StartupBook.net.

The fourth episode of Startups for the Rest of Us, the podcast I co-host with Mike Taber, is live at our podcast website.

This episode is titled Things We Wish We Knew When We Started Out. It looks back at lessons we’ve learned during our years of entrepreneurship.

This is the last episode I’ll announce for a while so if you’re interested in hearing two software entrepreneurs talk about software and web startups, subscribe using one of the links below. New episodes are out every Tuesday.

Subscribe via:

• iTunes (opens iTunes)
• RSS
• Email

A few weeks ago I asked for your opinion on the focus and format for my book. Since then I’ve worked out a lot more specifics, and today I’m pleased to announce them.

Start Small. Stay Small. A Developer’s Guide to Launching a Startup covers everything a software or web developer needs to know to launch and grow a startup with no outside funding. Sign up to receive a crazy pre-release deal when the book launches.

Here’s a snippet from the first chapter:

Who is this Book For?

This book is aimed at developers who want to launch a software or web startup with no outside funding. This book is for companies started by real people to solve real pain points using desktop, web and mobile applications.

In this book I assume:

• You don’t have $6M of investor funds sitting in your bank account
  
• You’re not going to relocate yourself or your family to the handful of startup hubs in the world
• You’re not going to work 70 hour weeks for low pay with the hope of someday making millions from your stock options

There’s nothing wrong with going after venture funding and trying to grow a company fast like Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Facebook. It just so happens that most people are not in a place where they can pursue that route.

As I began the writing process I received input from developers who told me they were tired of “filler” material – weak case studies, superficial interviews, chapters describing 10 options for how to accomplish a task but no guidance on which path you should take.

So I’ve focused on providing a practical, step-by-step approach to getting your startup off the ground and focused on making every word count. No filler allowed.

If you aren’t frantically underlining, highlighting or taking notes as you read each chapter, then I have not achieved my goal for this book.

Sound like fun?

Sign up to receive a crazy pre-release deal when the book launches.

I logged into iTunes Wednesday night and was pleasantly surprised to see our brand new podcast ranked #13 in its category:

This was before I realized it must be a “velocity” ranking; since we launched Wednesday we had a lot of new subscribers, which propelled us onto this “Top Podcasts” list. Either that or these podcasts have a lot fewer listeners than I thought.

Nah, it’s the velocity thing.

But Management and Marketing? iTunes needs to re-think these stodgy old categories because it’s the closest thing to “startups” they offer. In the drop down menu, Management and Marketing is just above Blacksmithing and Siege-weapon Manufacturing.

Oh well, we’re in good company alongside the Harvard Business IdeaCast, HubSpot’s Inboung Marketing University and StartupNation.

Our next episode, Stupid Reasons to Start a Software Company, will be out next Tuesday.

Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to the podcast, through iTunes or otherwise. If you have a minute, a rating and/or comment in iTunes will greatly help our visibility and ranking. You can also subscribe via RSS or email.

I’m in the first stage of writing a book.

I’ve been in talks with two publishers who approached me through this blog. But before I get too far into this process I need your help to find out what the book should focus on.

Shape the future by answering the two questions below…

Thanks to everyone who responded.

The phrase “joining the dark side” perfectly summarizes my feelings about the fact that I joined Twitter a few weeks ago.

It was the Business of Software 2009 conference that did it. They announced that you would miss out on certain parts of the conference if you weren’t on Twitter so I broke down and joined.

Like everyone else whom I’ve talked to, I think the verdict is still out about the real value of Twitter, but I’m in and I’m tweeting like crazy about Micropreneurship, microISVs, launching and marketing software, and making it work as a single founder.

You can find me at http://twitter.com/RobWalling

Look me up. We’ll tweet lunch.

Yep, that’s me (photo by jmpk).

Somehow I allowed myself to get talked into doing the Pecha Kucha at the 2009 Business of Software conference in San Francisco (seriously though, I want to thank Jeff Atwood for convincing me to go through with it).

Pecha Kucha is 20 slides, 20 seconds each…in 6 minutes 40 seconds you are done. And it’s twice as hard as it sounds.

I hope to share a video of the talk with you in the coming weeks, but for now here are a few resources I mentioned during the talk that I want to provide to anyone interested.

Overview
The presentation was titled Marketing is Design: Three Words that Increased Sales 1000%, and was based on an a post from about 8 months back.

Given the terse nature of the Pecha Kucha I focused the talk on the point that you should always be testing, and talked very briefly about how Google’s Website Optimizer allows you to do that quite easily. I also included some examples of smart companies and individuals who test.

Slides
Available here
(note: they are timed to automatically flip every 20 seconds).

Links

• Google Website Optimizer
• Getting Started with Google Website Optimizer
• Google’s A/B Testing with Gmail
• Frank Lutz

Screencast
I recorded a screencast that I mentioned during the talk. It’s for anyone who wants to setup an A/B test using Google Website Optimizer. It’s a lot faster than you think; you can setup your first test in under 5 minutes.

Apologies to those who read this blog via RSS. For about two weeks no new posts were showing up in my RSS feed, then last week old posts were marked as new with multiple rows of links added below them.

The real issue, though, is that ever since Google acquired FeedBurner there’s no human support so when something like this happens you’re on your own. It’s an interesting twist on the problem of trusting your data to the cloud, and one that has left me spending several hours trying to figure out the problem (a problem that began out of the blue).

In any case, I apologize for the inconvenience. Things appear to be back to normal.

Consider this the Year in Review for Software by Rob. Here are my seven most popular posts from 2008:

The Software Product Myth
“A certain percentage of developers become unhappy with salaried development over time (typically it’s shortly after they’re asked to manage people, or maintain legacy code), and they dream of breaking out of the cube walls and running their own show. Some choose consulting, but many more inevitably decide to build a software product.

‘After all,’ they think ‘you code it up and sell it a thousand times – it’s like printing your own money! I build apps all the time, how hard could it be to launch a product?’”

Should You Build or Buy Your Micro-ISV?
“None of the products I’ve built or bought required skills beyond that of a mid-level developer. Let’s be honest, building an invoicing system does not involve insanely complex algorithms and coding chops. Most successful Micro-ISV products (and a lot of not-so-Micro-ISV products) could have been built by a few solid mid-level developers.”

Lessons Learned “Selling” My Micro-ISV
“Within a week of my ‘for sale’ post I received 20 email inquiries, sent out nearly that many NDAs, distributed 13 sales packets, and spent about 10 hours answering questions via email. I set a deadline for offers, and by the time the deadline passed I had three suitable offers on my desk. Two of them were nearly identical, with a down payment and monthly payments. The third was something I hadn’t expected.”

The Five Minute Guide to Becoming a Freelance Software Developer
“This advice is intended for someone looking to become a freelance software developer or web designer (or looking to start a small web design/development/consulting firm). If you intend to seek venture capital then move along…these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

8 Ways to Recession-Proof Your Programming Career
“So in this age of uncertainty how should someone react who simply wants to collect a few greenbacks in exchange for their brilliant programming acumen? You could hide under your imitation Aeron and hope no one notices, or you could start pursuing ways to recession-proof your career.”

The Single Most Important Career Question You Can Ask Yourself
“Some people are consumers by nature; they consume vast quantities of knowledge purely for learning’s sake. Others are producers; they consume knowledge with the intent of one day acting on the knowledge and producing something, be it a book, a song, a blog, a startup, etc… Neither is better than the other. The key is to answer one question: which are you?”

How to Recruit a Developer Entrepreneur for Your Startup
“If you’re a non-technical founder looking for a developer entrepreneur, these are questions you should ask yourself. Having been on the developer side of the coin a number of times, here is my take.”

Suffice to say you probably noticed this site was down for a few days last week (the RSS feed was down even longer). At some point Wednesday morning the process that powers this site was consuming too much processing time and started being killed by an automated DreamHost script. You can read more about the gory details and bizarre side effects, but I just wanted to post a follow-up for the next person who encounters this.

After about 8 hours of troubleshooting I was downloading all of the files and database to move to another host, when the DreamHost support rep suggested I try to run this site under a different shell username. It was a shot in the dark, but sure enough as soon as I moved it to a new user everything started working. Unbelievable.

Of course, next was the hard question: Do I spend the 5 hours to move this blog to another hose, knowing that I’ve had no trouble with DreamHost in the past couple years and that a new host is as likely to have similar issues?

I’m sure some people will post comments about how bad DreamHost is, and all the problems they experience, but every host I’ve used (4 total) has at least this many problems, and I’ve experienced more downtime at other hosts.

After much consideration I’ve decided to stay with DreamHost for now, and have upgraded to their Private Server (PS) hosting, which allows me to move a dial and increase my usage in real time so this kind of thing can be avoided in the future.

But what bothers me is that this still doesn’t explain why my blog, which was not getting any more traffic than usual on Wednesday morning, suddenly became a processor hog.

WordPress? DreamHost? I’ll probably never know…

Update: An awesome DreamHost tech support rep named Mike M. went above and beyond and figured out one of my problems was a malicious comment spammer who was hitting my site repeatedly.

After taking care of that I noticed that the wp-cache is locking the site up once every couple days. I now know how to correct it once the lock happens (clearing the cache), but I have yet to find a sustainable resolution.

For now I am disabling the plug-in and hoping I don’t wind up with a big spike in traffic before I can install another decent WordPress caching plug-in.

Update: I finally fixed this issue based on a shot in the dark, hail mary attempt. I will blog about it more next week. For now, suffice to say this kind of thing makes me want to buy and colo my own server.

===

You may have noticed this site was down all day yesterday.

After about 5 hours of troubleshooting I’ve narrowed it down to either a WordPress issue, or a DreamHost issue.

Closing HTML Tag Killer
I know how to fix the problem: If I go into footer.php and remove the closing HTML tag the home page and single post display work…if I add it back they crash (500 error – when I look in the error log the message is “Premature end of script headers: php5.cgi”).

But the weirdest part is that I haven’t touched the blog, aside from publishing a couple new posts, in weeks. So for this to start suddenly means something else must have changed.

RSS Also Down
Although I hate the idea, I was considering leaving it without a closing HTML tag for the weekend and coming back to it after the holiday since browsers are very forgiving about not having a closing HTML tag. However, I noticed my RSS feed is also down, and when I remove the closing RSS tag the feed works in my browser, but FeedBurner chokes on it.

So I actually have to solve this problem. I’ve tried everything I can think of but haven’t made any progress in the last few hours.

404 Works
The last piece of information is that the 404 page works whether or not the closing HTML tag is in place. But when I copy the 404 page code into the index or single post template, it still crashes. So it seems like the content of the index and single post page don’t matter that much, although if I remove all of the content from these pages they do load fine.

Add to this the fact that the site stopped working very suddenly at 9 in the morning and it seems to me this is either a DreamHost issue or I’ve been hacked.

Help?
Any ideas are appreciated…

If you’re a WordPress guru and want to take a crack at fixing it I have no trouble compensating you for your time. Please email me at rob@softwarebyrob.com.

Blog Blazers is a book where “40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets to Creating a High-Profile, High-Traffic, and High-Profit Blog.” And amid the likes if Seth Godin, Eric Sink, Aaron Wall, and Jeff Atwood is yours truly (chapter 34).

It’s an easy book to pick up for a few minutes at a time since each chapter (comprising one interview) is only 5 or 6 pages. Many of the ideas presented are unique to this book, and I’ve been keeping a running list of changes I plan to implement on this blog.

The book hit the shelves last week. You can buy it from Amazon, or from the Blog Blazers website.

In the past 3 months I’ve completely revamped my development machine. I purchased a new external monitor, laptop, external keyboard, and printer. I figured the hours I spent researching and purchasing might benefit someone else looking to upgrade.

The New Laptop (Dell Inspiron 1525) – Dual core 2.4GHz processor, 4GB Ram, 320GB HD, Vista 64-bit. This thing screams. I’ve gone back and forth over the years between Inspirons and Latitudes, and while Inspirons have more consumer-friendly aspects (such as audio controls on the keyboard and a memory card reader), the placement of ports leaves a lot to be desired (Latitudes have all ports in the rear, while Inspirons have them all over the place). This time around I chose an Inspiron for the screen quality and price. Total cost was around $1450 including a 3-year at-home warranty.

The New Display (DELL SP2208WFP) – 22″ widescreen. 1680 x 1050 native resolution. Awesome brightness. Built-in webcam. The only downside is it doesn’t swivel 90 degrees (helpful for viewing long documents). Nonetheless, a steal at the sale price of $299 (now $339). I ran three displays for a while (2 externals + my laptop screen), but after I upgraded to Vista 64-bit my USB2DVI video adapter stopped working (no 64-bit drivers) so I’m back to two displays. I’ll probably buy a DualHead2Go in the near future, although fitting another 22″ monitor on my desk is going to be challenging.

The New OS (Vista Ultimate 64-bit) – Oy vey…transferring to a new laptop normally takes about 8 hours. This time, due to the 64-bit OS, it took me closer to 20. In addition, I lost the ability to sync with my Treo, the ability to use my Treo as a broadband cellular modem, and my ethernet card doesn’t work (although wireless is fine). I read a lot of reports on how Vista 64 is ready for primtime, and my comment is: “mostly.” Many peripherals did not work right away and this added up to several hours of troubleshooting.

I like Vista quite a bit (it’s fast with 4GB of RAM), but I have mixed feelings about the 64-bit upgrade path. However, if you want to utilize more than 3GB of RAM it’s your only choice; 32-bit Vista will not support more than 3GB. Of course, most of us remember when hard drives weren’t even 3GB. Crazy.

The New Keyboard (BTC 6300C) – I have long been a fan of laptop keyboards. I love the responsiveness of the keys and I type much faster on a laptop kayboard (which is due to the types of keys used, called “scissor keys”). I use an external keyboard since my laptop is elevated for optimal screen-viewing ergonomics (see picture below). After using a clunky $10 Dell keyboard for the past year it suddenly occurred to me that someone out there might just make an external keyboard with scissor keys. Lo and behold, there are several. I settled on the BTC 6300C, and love it. About $33 with shipping.

The New Printer (Samsung Clx-3175fn) – I looked everywhere for a color laser with built-in networking and a feeder tray. This is the only one I found under $600, and it was a steal at $299 from Office Depot (normally $399). I’ve had it for 2 weeks and I’m loving it. A huge improvement over my 5 ppm HP Photosmart.

My Rig. Simple, productive, and…gray. Wait, is that iTunes on the external monitor? Back to work!

The view from my office (note downtown Boston in the distance)

I’ve heard from a couple readers that they don’t like the idea of the password protected article I published yesterday. I wanted to explain a bit more about my thought process so you didn’t think this blog has been purchased by some marketing sheister.

My intent with the article notification list is to allow people to sign up for notification of the most important or substantial works from this blog, instead of having to slog through every post, whether via RSS or email. I’ve received requests from a few readers asking for this feature due to RSS overload; they were either severely limiting the RSS feeds they read, or stopping RSS altogether.

Previously I offered email notifications through FeedBlitz, but that feature sends an email every time I post, which is too noisy for most. In addition, I’ve always liked the fact that even though I subscribe to my favorite blogs’ RSS feeds, I can still sign up for email notification of their best content. So I wanted to offer this alternative and I wanted to kick it off with something extra to encourage people to sign up.

But here’s where I took a wrong turn: instead of publishing the article as a “page” in WordPress, I published it as a “post,” which means it appeared in the RSS feed. This gave the appearance that I was forcing you to give me your email address. In other words, while I intended to give those who signed up something extra, it appeared as if I was taking something away from anyone who didn’t sign up. This was not my intention, and if you’ve read this blog for any length of time this probably seemed out of character.

To fix this little snafu I’ve removed the password protection from the post (which you can find here). In addition, if you’ve already provided your email and would like remove it from the list please drop me a line using the “contact” link in the sidebar and I will gladly take care of it. I apologize for any confusion.

I write this post with mixed emotions. I acquired DotNetInvoice (an asp.net billing system) 15 months ago, fixed loads of bugs, added 50+ features, provided support, turned the customer base around (they were close to mutiny), and grew revenue by 6x. This program has become part of me as much as any code you work with for over a year. My intent was to turn it into a full-time Micro-ISV, but it appears that life has other plans.

I’ve come to realize over the past year that the time I’ve spent developing and supporting DotNetInvoice (DNI) has virtually replaced the time I used to spend working on my blog. Long-time readers will notice that my posting frequency dropped pretty substantially at the start of 2007 (due to my acquisition of DNI).

Debating this internally for the past several months has forced me to evaluate my goals and plans for the future. Through this I’ve decided to invest more time into growing this blog, and into an opportunity that I’ve been chasing for years (more to come later)…all of this means I have to make sacrifices to create room in my life.

So I’m selling DotNetInvoice.

Own Your Own Micro-ISV
Those who know me personally know I am not a fan of marketing language (nor am I good at writing it). So believe me when I say:

If you’re a .NET developer and dream of owning a Micro-ISV, this is a rare opportunity.

DotNetInvoice is a mature product with a substantial customer base, recurring revenue through support contracts, a high price point ($295), existing sales channels and partnerships, a highly tuned Google Adwords campaign, an existing sales site with 1000+ monthly visitors, #1 ranking in Google for many key terms, a monopoly in its niche, and everything in place to continue sales growth.

DotNetInvoice is a web-based application written in ASP.NET (VB.NET) 2.0/3.5 and SQL 2000/2005, and heavily utilizing MS AJAX. Customers download and install DotNetInvoice on their web server or shared hosting account to perform invoicing and billing. The best way to get a feeling for the functionality of the product is to try the online demos, and take a peek at the feature list.

This sale is not going to function like a Sitepoint auction where we exchange product for money and the deal is done. I will provide you with access to the DotNetInvoice Subversion repository so you can pull down the source, including bug fixes and features added since the last release, and I will provide you with 2 months of access to my FogBugz on Demand account so you can see all of the bug fixes and feature requests implemented to date, and feature requests in the queue for future releases (most of them requested by customers), and have plenty of time to transfer them to your own tracking system.

I have invested a lot in this product, and it’s in my best interest (as a public figure in the developer community) to ensure DotNetInvoice continues to thrive.

If You Are Interested
Based on revenue, the sale price will be 5-figures ($25k-65k). If you are a serious buyer and are interested in discussing it further, please email me at rob -at- softwarebyrob dot com and I will provide you with the NDA. Once you’ve signed it I will answer all of your questions and send over every bit of detail you can imagine about the product.

[Update]: The deal has closed. I’ll be posting about it soon.

[tags]asp.net, microisv, micro isv, dotnetinvoice[/tags]

It appears that making our way back to California wasn’t in the cards this time around. In two and a half months I’ll be moving from New Haven to Boston. My wife got a rather prestigious job offer in Boston and given that it’s the #2 startup hub in the country it wasn’t too hard to convince me to move. I’m already scoping out a sweet apartment near the “T” (what they call their subway) a few miles from the “Hahbah” (what they call their harbor).

I guess it’s time to transition to another town; to learn the train system, roads, and locations of the grocery store, post office, and good places to eat. After 9 moves in 7 years we’re getting pretty good at it.

I’ll be attending user group meetings and entrepreneur meet-ups to break into the “scene,” so if you’re in the area I hope we can connect.

[tags]boston, relocation[/tags]