All About Starting and Running a Web Business

2006-03-28T22:21:00.000-08:00

You just heard of an ordinary college dropout just sold his web e-commerce business for tens of millions of dollars and you decide that it is time you get into it yourself. A web business can eventually just involve waking up in the morning and checking your latest signups and bank balance before making your way down to the golf course. But in the short-term it is probably going to involve long hours, frustrations, failures, no income, no success and no love.

The information on this site will guide you through starting and running a web startup business and everything that is involved in the process. Take shortcuts by learning from the mistakes others make and learn about what works and what doesn't work by absorbing the mass of information avaliable online now about the web, business, customers and marketing.

Articles To Read Before You Start

2006-03-28T22:19:00.000-08:00

If you want to get a better idea of what you are getting yourself into read the following and gain an understanding of all that is involved in starting a business - especially a web business.

Ideas for Startups: Learn quickly that your idea alone is worth pennies without the right plan and execution
How to Start a Startup: Learn the keys to success: get the right people, build something people want and be tight with your spending
No one starts with a masterpeice: Lower your expectations and stop wanting to be the 'next Google' - important lessons about expectations
Guide to Starting Your Business: All the basics - structure, accounting, taxation, legal. You have to know all this.
10 Rules for Web Startups: Essential rules from a startup vetran

Here are the tools and services you need

2006-03-28T22:17:00.000-08:00

Here are a list of application and services that you can use to run your business and keep yourself better organised. Some of these apps help you with common tasks such as picking a domain name, picking a color scheme, tracking your customers and organising your time and projects.

FogBugz: Track bugs and customer support cases via a web interface
Instant Domain Search: You will need a domain and if you only want to spend a few dollars you will need one that hasn't been squatted on
Wordpress: You will need a blog and you will need the best blogging software
EV1 Servers: Best value server provider - you can go cheaper but don't
Basecamp: For project management online - has it's limits but good until you outgrow it.
Jotspot: Online hosted Wiki's and applications. I use it to write specs to share with a group of developers.
Blinksale: A good application that allows you to manage customers and send out invoices to them
Kiko: Online calendar (doesn't seem to work at the moment)
Salesforce: And if you can afford it, replace most of the above and get the best web CRM there is with Salesforce (have used it for years)
Colr: Need help finding the right color theme? This online app will help you pick a color and a pallete of colors to match it so your site won't look ugly.

Development tools and applications

2006-03-28T22:16:00.000-08:00

Now that you have the background, understanding and the background tools required you will need to write that app that will send you into an early retirement. The following is the application set I am currently using with projects. There are some veterans in the list that I have been using for years such as FreeBSD and Postgresql (dont compromise on web servers and the database) and there are some new-comers such as RubyOnRails.

Eclipse: Eclipse is the best IDE with many plugins. Run you repository, access your databases, run queries, start servers and write code all from this open source and extensible environment
FreeBSD: Free, open source and mature UNIX operating system ideal for web servers
Postgresql: A free and open source database with all the features and stability of commercial databases. Fast, scalable with excellent documentation. Use postgres if you want more than SELECT and INSERT
RubyOnRails: A new web development platform that allows you to quickly write powerfull applications using widely accepted development models and design patterns
Subversion: The best code repository application and an excellent alternative to CVS, Perforce or Sourcesafe. Integrates well into Eclipse.

Development References

2006-03-28T22:15:00.000-08:00

Keep the following references a bookmark away and share them with your developers for when they get stuck or need to lookup something. Also some sites to help your development easier

FreeBSD Handbook: Excellent documentation for the FreeBSD operating system
O'Reilly Safari: Read thousands of tech books online with a low monthly subscription
Mastering AJAX: Excellent guide on AJAX from IBM
CSS cheat sheet: Cheat sheet for all CSS properties and values
W3 Validator: Validate your markup and make sure you comply. The W3 site also contains all the standards (XHTML, CSS etc.)
Regular Expression Tutorial: Learn to use regular expressions and save time and be more efficient
HTML Center: Web design tutorials and libraries
Hostscripts: A large library of scripts in Perl, PHP, Javascript etc.

Blogs to watch

2006-03-28T22:13:00.000-08:00

These are just some of the blogs you should be reading if you are thinking of starting your own web business

JoelOnSoftware: Joel has been running a software company for years after working at Microsoft and talks a lot of sense.
Paul Graham: Paul Graham sold his startup to Yahoo! before some of us even knew what the web was
Don Dodge: Don Dodge has the great job of watching startups for the Microsoft acquisition team
Ventureblog: Learn from the best VC's about what the trends are
Om Malik: Om keeps on top of latest tech, trends and acquisitions
Silicon Beat: News about money, tech and innovation
Pete Cashmore: Pete writes about the latest releases and the entrepreneur experience
Techcrunch: Keep an eye on the competition and other offerings with Techcrunch profiling the latest and best of Web2.0
Eric Sink: Eric Sink is yet another startup veteran who is also a prolific writer

All About Starting and Running a Web Business

All About Starting and Running a Web Business

Articles To Read Before You Start

Here are the tools and services you need

Development tools and applications

Development References

Blogs to watch

Recommended Reading