Normally the product is defined as a web site. Most founders are fairly passionate about the features and functions of the web site, iPhone application, Facebook application, or whatever web application represents the product. What applications and web sites have you been using? I talk to a lot of founders of startups. My initial conversations normally focus on the core of the business, important Startup Metrics , probably marketing strategy (ex.

Warren Jolly’s site, CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com , started out as little more than a message board for web entrepreneurs who were running affiliate ads, but he was determined to grow its revenue. asked him if he thought of charging forum members who used his site to talk about affiliate programs. “You Listen to how he makes money by being smarter about his sites So he talked to his customers, and what he heard taught him how to bring his revenues up to $400,000 per month. It wasn’t easy — most entrepreneurs would have given up if they were rejected half

Ever notice how successful Internet entrepreneurs keep saying that you should build your site by listening to your users? See the site with strangers You can’t just put a feedback button on your site and hope people will come. But no one ever explains how to get user feedback and how to integrate their ideas into your business. That’s why I asked UserVoice ’s co-founder, Marcus Nelson, to come to Mixergy and teach how to build a startup with user feedback.

He told us how the idea for Wikipedia evolved, how he got people to contribute to it, why people promoted the site, and more. So we got a lot of early press coverage from slashdot, for example, which drove a lot of traffic to the site, got a lot of people excited and interested in the concept.  How did Jimmy Wales get the world to help him write an encyclopedia? And what could YOU learn from his experiences to help you build a business that leaves a legacy?

That's what I invited Sara Sutten Fell, the site's founder, to teach. 1 Have a phone number on your site Not only does she say that 95% of the people who call the company end up buying, but having the number on the site increases conversions on the site. Sara 2 Highlight your media mentions to give your site credibility FlexJobs has over 10,000 subscribers who pay to access its job listings. In a world were online job listings are usually free, how does FlexJobs get thousands of people to pay for access?

The templates help online retailers work through visualization and testing of their sites, before actual coding of their web sites. El Segundo-based iRise, a maker of software for prototyping web applications and software, is targeting ecommerce retailers with a new set of templates, the firm said Wednesday. According to iRise, it has made pre-configured, business software visualization templates for the firm's products available to ecommerce retailers.

That little act of creativity became Airbnb, the (profitable) site that allows anyone to list their extra space for rent. This The founders of Airbnb are guys who couldn't make rent a few years ago, but they kept turning desperation into creative solutions. In October 2007, eager to make extra money, they noticed that local hotels were booked up because of a conference.

The firm's site now allows users to email, write, or make calls via Skype and Jaxtr to their political representatives. Los Angeles-based You2Gov, an online social networking startup focused on politics, said this week that it has added new technology to allow its users to directly contact members of Congress. According to You2Gov, it has created a free, customized database with contact information from all of the members of the United States Congress, including the House and the Senate.

He’s a smart developer and designer who built the dating site Mingle 2 in only 66.5 Want to see one way he marketed his site? Am I the only one who thinks that startups spend too much time geeking out about code and development, but not enough time getting passionate about marketing? If you want to get passionate about the power of clever marketing, download the program I recorded with Matthew Inman .

San Diego-based BrightQube, an angel-backed stock photo search site, has updated its web services to make it easier for photo buyers to find images. BrightQube rolled out its new web site earlier this week, adding such features as pop-up search tips, new navigation options, filtering, and other features. According to BrightQube, the changes are intended to help simplify the process of buying stock photographs--photos which are BrightQube has developed a radically different user interface specifically aimed at filtering through both microstock and professional stock photography, making it easier for graphics designers and other who use stock photography to find particular images visually.