Being the sole person trying to build this product, my time is at an extreme premium.  As much as I love writing this blog, sometimes you have to sacrifice things you love to get through a tough time.

Last month Joel Spolsky said goodbye to blogging.  He expressed sadness at leaving his readers.  While I have barely a fraction of the readers Joel had, I empathized with him.

I hope this is not permanent.  But it could be a while before I come back.

See ya ’round.

- Lisa

* * *

I haven’t been getting much in the way of referrals from this group, so I really worked hard to come up with some compelling content to present, and at the end of the presentation I gave them a 10-minute homework assignment.  I provided explicit and easy instructions on how to sign up for Grouvia, create a group, and add two small pieces of content.

Guess how many people got all the way through my step-by-step 10-minute assignment?  Go ahead, guess.

TWO.  Pretty pathetic, right?  Out of 25 people, I think about five people actually bothered to give it a try.  Three gave up without ever asking me a single question.  One of the people who completed the task is my business partner.  The other person who did it is the secretary of the group.  So here’s my public thank you to Betsy and Tom for showing some spunk and commitment.

I have come to the conclusion that people will not do *anything* unless you push them.  And I mean really push hard.  I think in my case it’s because people are afraid of new things, web applications in particular.

Many of the people in my audience are not best friends with the www.  I would be willing to forgive those people.  But I’m talking about the ones who DO have Facebook accounts and Blackberries.  This should be easy for them.

Why do they resist?

Have they been fed so many bad complicated ugly web applications over the past 9 years that they expect everything new to be bad, complicated, and ugly?  There are many new Web 2.0 apps out there that are outstanding.  The problem is they are not ubiquitous.  The vast majority of web sites still suck.  But when the tides turn, and people start having confidence in the web again, Grouvia will be right there waiting.

* * *

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As you know if you’ve been following my blog, I’ve had some issues with my offshore development team.  I won’t go into those details again, except to say that it gets better for a while, and then gets worse for a while.  The fact is I could not have gotten the work done for the price I paid any other way.  The ups and downs come with the territory.

Working with non-technical VAs is a little different, and usually not as volatile.  One of my VAs was this awesome guy I hired last October.  Oddly enough he was from India and not the Philippines… I wonder if that was part of the problem…

He was so cheap I almost couldn’t believe my luck when I realized how good he was.  For a long time I had him doing research on clubs, compiling a list of as many clubs as he could find.  After some initial training he was pretty much on auto-pilot for 20 hours a week.

Then I felt that he was starting to lose interest, his work was still good but he wasn’t putting in the hours.  I figured he was bored and I needed some testing done so I put him on that (he had some experience testing).

The first week was great, he did all the regression testing, learned the Bugzilla interface and entered bugs and all seemed fine.  Then I put him on writing test cases.

And he disappeared.

I didn’t even notice.

I was so lulled by his previous competence I just believed he would continue to do what he was supposed to do and didn’t need babysitting.

WRONG.

Rule number 1.  Your offshore VAs always need babysitting.  ALWAYS!

Here’s the story in a nutshell… a week and a half after I put him on test cases, I happened to be on oDesk doing something unrelated, and I noticed his work log was emtpy.  It was halfway through the week and he had not logged any hours.  I looked at the previous week.  0:50 hours.  Huh?

So I shot off an email to him asking what was going on and he got back to me immediately and apologized and said he had personal issues that had nothing to do with work.

I was so mad I fired him on the spot and ended his assignment and gave him a lukewarm rating and UNshared him from all my Google Doc files he was using.

Now I’m a little upset with myself for letting my anger drive such a bad business decision.  It was my fault.  I never should have put him on a critical task.  If he had still been doing internet research on clubs I would have just let it pass and waited for his personal issues to sort themselves out.  Then he’d come back and pick up where he left off at his ultra cheap rate and all would be well again.

Damn.

So to recap the lessons learned…

1. Don’t assign a part-time, low-level, offshore resource to any task you consider critical to your business.
2. Check in with your VAs once a week at minimum.  If they are doing something important, check with them twice a week.  A 10-minute Skype chat works just fine.
3. When a VA disappoints you, don’t do anything until you’ve given yourself 24 hours to cool off and figure out who’s fault it really was.

* * *

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I hired this awesome offshore contractor to do the design and I got a preliminary screenshot today.  I sent it to a colleague and we were talking about it, and to one of her comments I said, “yeah, it looks so much better, cleaner… like we’re funded.”

She laughed.

I can’t put my finger on what that really means, but I feel like it’s true.  The new design makes Grouvia look like the other Web 2.0 sites that have been professionally designed… and those designs probably costs tens of thousands of dollars.  This is costing me about $350.  Of course I have to implement it myself, but that’s ok.  If I wanted to I could probably get that done for a few hundred bucks also.

[Speaking of cheap labor, I said to my Dad the other day, "these people are my staff."  By this I was referring to the subcontractors I've hired from the Phillipines, India, and now Belarus (where they heck is that anyway?).  I'm addicted to offshore staffing.  Need something done quickly for practically no money?  Hire a Filipino!]

Anyway, I’m totally thrilled with this new design – I can’t wait to get it up on the site.  It just feels right.  It feels… funded.

* * *

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That’s not to say they are all implemented perfectly, or even completely.  We still have some missing pieces and a few hundred bugs.

But I’m just sayin’…

For the next two and a half weeks we have to focus very clearly on launching www.  This means we will…

1. FIX BUGS.
2. Work on the SEO strategy.
3. Fix more bugs.
4. Post as many free ads and links as possible.
5. Test bug fixes.
6. Improve the site’s marketing copy and landing pages.
7. Fix more bugs.
8. Convert the static  marketing pages to Drupal content.
9. Fix… etc.
10. Build demos and how-to articles.
11. LAUNCH.

I’m torn between having one more bug fix release to beta before the production launch.  But honestly I just want this thing in production.

I mean, Facebook has tons of bugs, and people keep using it!

I’m really excited.  We’re turning a corner.  And getting to the next phase is always fun.

* * *

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Link building is a key component of any good SEO strategy.  Or so she told me and I had to agree because I didn’t know any better.

Link building is an ongoing effort, she says.  You do it a little bit every week, for several weeks at a time, and then repeat that over and over.  In a nutshell, it requires 2-3 people posting comments, blog entries, forum replies, answers to questions, etc, on high ranking sites a whole bunch of times, all containing links back to your site.

At some point, you will see your site’s PR (page rank) improve enough that your SEO effort takes on a life of its own and you don’t need the manual link building any more (or much).  At least that’s the idea.

So now that I’ve done a little research into how this works, let me tell you something: it is not as simple as it sounds.  Let’s go over some of the finer points of link building:

• First of all, this work is BORING and I certainly can’t spend hours and hours every week doing this.  So I decided to get some cheap VAs (virtual assistants) to help.  I posted a very simple job opening on oDesk and within 2 hours had close to 50 applicants.  Whoa horsey!!!  I shut that faucet off as soon as I could chat the help desk to ask them how.
• My personal ethics will not allow me to use black hat methods.  If you don’t know what that is, look it up on wikipedia.  Trust me, it’s bad.  But what it means is that I have to filter out any candidates who I think might use these techniques, because the last thing I want is for Grouvia’s reputation to be tarnished before we’re even one lap into the race.
• You have to hit all different kinds of sites, from ebay and craigslist to blogs, article comments, review sites, and answer sites.  You have to hit the ones that have high PR, you have to hit them at different times of the day, and you have to hit them from different IP addresses and different devices and browsers.
• Here’s a critical piece:  the things you hit have to be RELEVANT to your subject matter.  You can’t just hit anything — you have to hit stuff that means something to your site and your site’s audience.  For Grouvia I could hit anything group-related.
• Finally, the things you say in these posts have to be relevant and valuable.  You can’t just put a comment on a blog post that says “thanks for the great post, signed soandso at www.grouvia.com”.  That would be spam and I get that all the time on my blog.  I trash them, even if it’s the only comment.  Especially the ones that are written by a non-English speaker.  Please.

My friend (the same one I talked about earlier) does this for a living.  She started doing it with stock sites when she was a day-trader, and according to her it works like a charm.

The whole thing seems really scummy, but everyone does it.  Apparently if you don’t do it your site is destined for Internet purgatory forever because nobody will ever find it.  Either that or you’ll have to pay for search engine advertisements which, when you have no money, is not much of an option.

[I just found this hilarious post called 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity.  Maybe he'll see my link and link back to me.]

* * *

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I am almost glad the Grouvia beta testing is going slower than I had expected.  I’d rather have one or two people finding a problem than a hundred.  Especially since the development team seems to be dragging their feet with bug fixing.  It’s getting old.

But that’s besides the point.

The point is, I can’t even keep track of all the things that need to get done.  My desk is a disaster, my email is piling up, my VAs are asking me what to do next, and I have an SEO job posting on oDesk that is a month old because I can’t find the time to interview candidates.  And that’s only the stuff I can remember at this moment.

Example: (spoiler! embarrassing moment coming!) I spent the entire drive to my networking meeting this week practicing a new elevator speech about how Grouvia helps groups with four key areas: promotion, communication, planning, and sharing.  My mind kept wandering and I had to keep forcing it back to the speech.  I arrived at the meeting place and got my buffet-style, brown-edged lettuce and mayo-drenched “sea legs” stuff they call salad (don’t ask, cuz I won’t admit where we meet).

Then I sat through small talk with the guy at the table, the president’s intro, the 10-minute speaker, and 16 other elevator pitches.  When it was my turn I started out strong.  Then right in the middle I forgot one of the four things.  OMG.

Of course somebody reminded me what the wayward item was, and I made a joke out of it, and the embarrassing moment was over… but still!

I read Meg Hirshberg’s latest piece in Inc. this morning on the treadmill (yeah, I switched topics, just stay with me for a minute here).  She has real insight into the entrepreneurial mind, and she’s seeing it from the outside (which probably provides a lot more clarity than being on the inside).  But it made me smile, because the lady gets it.  I wish I had her cool in times like this, when I feel like I’m about to totally lose it.  (If you don’t know Meg, pick up a copy of Inc.)

Meg + treadmill = illusion of calm.  It’s temporary but that’s ok.

This crazy week will end, just like all the others.  It’s all part of the journey.  We learn from it, and move on.  I’m not sure what I learned yet.  Maybe just that life is weird and unpredictable and fun.

* * *

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I have never belonged to one of these groups before.  I thought it would be similar to Chamber of Commerce networking events I attended years ago with my prior company.  It’s nothing like that (which is great because I hated them).  Those people you meet once, get their business card and never hear from them again.  This group, on the other hand, meets regularly every week, and you really start to feel a kinship with each other.

This particular group is what’s known as an exclusive referral group.  The members (only one per business type is allowed) are expected to refer business to each other based on their contacts.  So if you are an auto mechanic and one of your customers happens to mention that her daughter just got engaged, you should be able to refer her to your group’s caterer, photographer, real estate agent, travel agent, etc.  You essentially become a salesperson for each of the other members of your group.  It’s a pretty simple formula.

My ability to be a productive member of this group meets with two challenges.  First of all my customers are not your typical sales leads.  It is hard to explain to the group the type of referrals that are valuable to me and to Grouvia.  (BTW – each person has 45 seconds each week to stand up and tell the group what they do and who would be a good referral for them.)  Although a few people have mentioned that Grouvia might help their <whatever> group, I have not gotten any solid referrals yet.

My second challenge is that since I work out of my home office 99% of the time, I don’t meet a lot of people who talk to me about their needs.  Grouvia does not have many users yet, so I don’t have a lot of regular contact with my customers like other businesses do.

However, I keep going to the meetings every week, in the hopes that one of these days things will click between this group and me.  I’ve met some very nice people, and some are even becoming my friends.  It gets me out of the house — I force myself to dress up a little and put some makeup on, instead of just throwing on jeans and a sweatshirt and a pair of slippers.

Another benefit?  Being an entrepreneur is a lonely job, and this helps me feel less lonely.

So the bottom line is that even though I have not seen any tangible business benefit yet, there is definitely a personal benefit, which is equally valuable.

* * *

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This is a milestone year for me.  This year represents my 50th year on this planet, and I intend to make the most of it.

Grouvia will come alive this year.  I spent almost all of 2009 working on planning, building, and worrying about it, which I admit was way too much time.  Now it’s showtime.  This thing has to make it or break it by the end of June or I’m going to start implementing Plan B.

My stepson graduates from college this year.  Fly little birdie, fly!!!  That means now we get to start paying off the debt, instead of just racking it up.  Woo hoo!  At least we get a trip to Miami out of it.

My husband’s 50th birthday is also this year, and he’s bugging me to go somewhere fun for our combined birthdays.  We are hoping to somehow find the $ to take a trip to Spain.  We are taking donations — please email me if you wish to contribute.

I’m going to run my first half-marathon in May.  Holy cow that is a scary thought.  But even if I have to walk half of it I’m going to do it.

Obviously the big one for me (and for this blog) is Grouvia.  This project has been in the planning stages since 2006.  We gave ourselves five years to “make it big” but I believe that it needs to be successful before it can grow.

What do I mean by “successful”?  People like it, use it, find it valuable, and tell their friends.  Nobody hates it or thinks it’s stupid.  As long as I know that by the end of June, I know we’ll be golden.  Then I’ll have 18 months to monetize it and market the hell out of it.  Good plan right?  Yeah.

Yup, 2010 is an important year.  And I’m ready for it.

* * *

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The marketing copy was originally developed based on what we were trying to deliver with Grouvia.  The initial surveys we did back in the beginning gave us insight into what people are looking for, and our initial feature set was based on that.  So the development of the marketing copy was based on feature-needs, not necessarily real-life needs.

There’s a lot more behind this of course, but I don’t have the time or desire to write a novel-length blog post, nor would you have time to read it, so you’ll have to trust me that a lot of thought and planning went into all this.  But there’s only so much you can do without a huge pile of money to do market research.

In an effort to root out what was causing the high bounce-rate, I asked a colleague unfamiliar with Grouvia to spend an hour with me so I could virtually observe her as she went through the web site.  We started on the home page while she pretended she was a user looking for a place to manage her neighborhood homeowners association (HOA), of which she is President.

We talked through each of the pages she thought she might visit during her evaluation, and she told me everything that came to mind, both good and bad, without reservation or bias.  She was great at this, I could not have chosen a better person to do this with me at this point.

The exercise both opened my eyes and confirmed what I thought — it’s time to re-write the copy.

Now for an interesting twist:  last week I posted a job opening on oDesk for candidates with SEO/SEM expertise to help me improve the search engine rankings of Grouvia.  (I mentioned I was going to do in last week’s post.)

One candidate wrote to me saying she would not be able to apply for the position because she was booked until February, but she was nice enough to spend some time looking at the Grouvia site, and giving me her opinion of the content, as well as some tips on how to find a good SEO person to hire.

I was very impressed by, and grateful for, this gift.  What she said resonated with me, especially one thing in particular:  “Your sites [sic] content is currently on a very advanced reader understanding level and unless you are only trying to appeal to the college graduate, you may want to tone that down some.”

Well knock me over with a feather.  So.  Like.  Duh.

Fast forward to the pseudo-usability test with my colleague (who just so happens to be a Ph.D and probably in a  stratospheric reading comprehension level.)  I mentioned the candidate’s comments and she said she’d heard that you should always write your copy for an eighth-grader.

Oh sure.  Like I know how to talk to an eighth grader, much less write marketing copy for one.

I think I’ll need to delay my SEO tasks until I rewrite the web site copy.  Or maybe I need an SEO expert who can also write at an eighth grade level and then we will accomplish two things at once.

Either way, I’m rediscovering that marketing is still way more fun than programming.

* * *

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