So, I Finally Launched a Corporate Homepage

Only took seven months, and you know, I'm a really-web focused person. Pitiful. Honestly. One's own dog food, eating it. http://www.annehollandventures.com/

My Newest Research Service Launches: Subscription Site Insider

So, now you can see for yourself why I was so nervous about that video camera. Blech. At least I covered up the worst of a bad hair day with clever use of charts and stuff.

Biggest lesson: don't use a Web developer in California (no matter how great) to build a site that needs to be posted and hosted by a team in the UK (no matter how great). No matter how great virtual teams are, time zone juggling can wreak havoc on your launch calendar.

I'd like to thank my research partners, Infocommerce Report, SIPA (Special Information Publishers Association) and Membergate's MembershipSiteOwner.com for inspiring and helping with our first upcoming Benchmark Study on the subscription site industry. Where did I get the $4.5 billion number from? I'll reveal all shortly.

In the meantime, if you yourself are an executive in online publishing, paid content or subscription sites, please take a few minutes right now to give your answers to my historic survey. Yes, you can get a copy of my Executive Summary of results for free afterwards as my thanks for participating! Here's the survey link. Thanks.

B2B Marketing vs B-to-B Marketing: Why Ultra-Precise Copywriting Online Matters

I know from tons of past research that the title of a webinar (or white paper) is the single most important element that dictates if people will register for it or ignore it. Speaker name runs second.

So, when I landed Mac McIntosh -- who is pretty much a god among gurus in the business sales lead generation world -- to be my official co-host of this month's WhichTestWon Webinar, I was psyched. But I knew I still had to work hard on the title so more business marketers would come.

First and foremost, I checked the keyword tool in my Google AdWords account. How, precisely, do business marketers describe their specialty these days? Here's the data from a precise word match of the last month's searches:

B-to-B marketing = 4,400 searches
Business-to-business marketing = 27,000 searches
B2B marketing = 49,500 searches!!!

Which really freaked me out. I mean, nobody used the spelling 'b2b' until maybe 2000. And even then, it was only the dot-commers who used it. Guess it went mainstream when I wasn't looking.

If I had used my own copywriting judgment, in a data vacuum, I wouldn't have used the term B2B in the webinar title. Thank goodness I checked first.

It's (Relatively) Easy to Raise Venture Capital These Days - As Long as You Don't Want $100-900k

As in any big recession, lots more people have been starting their own businesses. What's fascinating for me is how few actually had to. Most of my acquaintances who've started companies in the past 18 months, weren't laid off. But, they were bored and feeling tapped out at their jobs. When companies lay low to ride a recession out, inevitably your most inventive, risk-taking executives start to get the entrepreneurial itch.

My friends, often well connected 40-somethings, had no trouble finding that first angel round of $50-200k, usually called Friends and Family. Especially if you've had some career connection with the Internet, most of us have a few old bosses and colleagues who've retired, obscenely rich, to the hills beyond Silicon Valley or Austin. And then there's your 401k that's sunk so much that you may as well take out the remainder and put it into play.

Unfortunately perhaps, that early round comes in so easily that some people spend it too easily. Few people manage those first funds by assuming they'll have to bootstrap the rest of the way. I think they figure the next round will go swiftly too. So, having spent all available funds but the site or software is still only partly finished, they go looking for the next round.

And it's the second round that's the bitch nowadays. That additional $100-900k that you need just to finish off your site or service build and get it into market. "Looks great! Call me as soon as when you have some revenues and you need at least $1 million." the professional venture guys say.

I'm not personally looking for money or investing money these days. I'm just dispensing advice. My advice is:

#1. Treat each injection of cash you receive as though it's your last.

#2. Don't allow any of your executive team to spend the majority of their time fundraising unless they either (a) take no salary and are not good at anything else to do with building the company, or (b) it's going incredibly well (in which case you probably have revenues and are looking for more than $1 million.) Fundraising can easily suck all the oxygen out of the room so little else gets done... and the clock is ticking!

#3. If your vision is a mansion, but you only have enough money to build a corner of it, design and build that corner so that you can move in and live there while you save up to build the next room and the next room. Don't waste your money pouring a massive, mansion-sized foundation and then have nothing left to build anything above ground.

#4. Avoid, at all costs, going into business with friends, relatives, and former colleagues even if they are unemployed, bored to death at their companies, and/or agree to invest in the company too. The only possible exception: friends, colleagues, and relatives who have been serial entrepreneurs in negative economic times with a track record of wearing multiple hats in new, uber-tiny organizations.