Aardvark Daily

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Survivor Cyberspace?

I've always been keen to help kick-start new techy ventures and it's good to see that would-be entrepreneurs have a new resource on the web.

The website Start-up.co.nz appears to be a great resource for anyone contemplating or already in the throes of launching a new online venture.

There's lots of commonsense advice, a few insights into the process of organising and running a startup, plus a good dose of content aggregated from elsewhere on the web.

The website appears to be the online presence of StartUP magazine, a periodical that launched in December 2007.

Interestingly enough, the first I'd heard of this website was the mention they got in today's edition of Stuff.

For a publication that includes plenty of sage advice on marketing, I was surprised that this site has had such a low profile to date.

The Stuff story which alerted me to the Start-Up website describes how Kiwi startups are being invited to register on the site to win a chance to launch their product in the USA.

Well first thing this morning I could see no obvious mention of this offer on the Start-Up website - what's with that?

A key element of successful marketing is timing. You have to ensure that you have all your ducks in a row before you start selling poultry.

Perhaps the site will be updated by the time you visit later today - but let's not forget that many of the "best" entrepreneurs are also early-starters who get a great deal of their work done before breakfast.

It's also important to make sure that your website works properly and I would have thought that someone preaching "how to do it right" would have taken a moment to at least run their site through Google's Webmaster Tools so as to pick up glaring errors like the 404 error when clicking the "Start-up Directory" link in the main portion of this page.

Come on guys, this is a slick looking site with gobs of great info, don't spoil it by making amateurish mistakes like this.

Should I mention at this juncture that I perform website audits and nobody should ever launch a website without getting it closely scrutinized by a third party -- so as to catch those sneaky little errors?

This brings up another important point that maybe mentioned on the site but I'm not sure.

How many folks actually *use* their webserver logs?

Sure, it's fun to gaze at the pretty graphs, pie charts and figures that a good web-log analyzer will spit out, but are people actually using that data for anything other than impressing others with their "hits"?

Some of the most useful data actually comes from the error log.

If you've got a spelling mistake in a URL, have moved a page without updating the dependencies, etc -- that error log will soon alert you to the fact.

When I hit a website that throws up 404 errors I often find that the same errors exist the next time I return, which may be weeks or months later.

This tells me that the people behind the site don't really pay much attention to detail. Would you want such a company doing work for you? Worth thinking about if you've not checked your own site recently.

And, before everyone emails in their favourite web-fault with this site, I have to say that I know there are many and perhaps run the risk of being labeled a hypocrite -- except that I don't run Aardvark as a business. This site is (and always has been) something quite different.

If I were actively pitching my ad-space to advertisers and developing websites commercially then I'd be very embarrassed by what you see here. However, I only get the short time from around 5:30am to 8:30am each morning to knock up two columns and a roundup of the world's sci-tech news. That's not long and mistakes will/do happen.

But, when it counts, I can be incredibly methodical and professional in my approach to the work in front of me.

But back to the real subject of today's column.

It's good to see that these guys have roped in a production company to make a TV series based on the startups that are chosen for this "competition?"

Unfortunately, I really wonder if this isn't going to become more "entertainment" than serious help for those involved.

The more I see of programmes such as Dragon's Den, etc -- the more I realise that those who produce such programmes are only interested in making dramatic TV. Unfortunately, from the perspective of someone who may have sunk their entire life's savings into a start-up, their goal will be somewhat different.

Their sole focus should be on making that venture a success -- not entertaining the nation.

If you ask any successful entrepreneur they'll tell you that one of the keys to success is *focus*. If you allow yourself to become distracted by a TV producer's wish to turn your hard work into "reality TV" you may be shooting yourself in the foot.

I guess only time will tell exactly whether this series will be Survivor Cyberspace or a really useful documentary about the trials and experiences of budding entrepreneurs. Let's hope it's the latter (but I wouldn't bet on it).

So tell me, do you actually *use* the server logs from your website or the sites you administer?

What's your take on the Start-UP website? Good stuff or just repackaged commonsense?

And if you were an entrepreneur with everything resting on the success of your venture, would you really consider having your focus diverted by a chance to appear on "Survivor Cyberspace?"

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