Quick post to let you know I’ve decided to move from Buenos Aires back to the bay area (where I grew up).  I’ll be moving in a few days.  I was planning to keep traveling for a while but a great opportunity came up to work on a new startup.

While I was back in the bay area for Christmas I randomly emailed some folks who had posted on Hacker News about their startup.  I went and met them for coffee and we ended up meeting for the next 6 hours!  We talked business and strategy, geeked out on programming skills, and talked about the future.  They liked my background in startups  and what they needed in a programmer was a good match with my skills.  Their idea is solid and has some big potential.  A week later they made me an offer to come join them and I decided to accept.

They are 3 very smart guys who just got funding for their idea, and it is a y-combinator company, something I’ve always wanted to be a part of.  The startup is still in stealth mode so I won’t post a link to the site yet (I will when we launch).  Their investors are high profile and the sort of people I want to meet.  The bay area is also the center of everything in the technology startup world right now, and I’d love to dive into that scene head first.  Part of me was reluctant to give up traveling the world for a bit, and technically it is a “real job” which conflicts with the message of this site :)  But it is a startup and my own projects will keep running on the side (luckily they run almost entirely on their own at this point – both businesses and investment property) and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get involved in this group.

In short, I can’t wait to get to the bay area.  Vagabonding has been fun for a bit, and Buenos Aires is a magical city that I won’t soon forget, but I can’t wait to see what opportunities lie in Silicon Valley.

Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong

Image by Thomas Hawk

This is an exciting announcement.  For the last few months I’ve been working on a new web app (was contracted to build it actually) and today is the beta launch!

The site is Seoaholic.com.  The name is a made up word which combines SEO (search engine optimization) and “work-a-holic”.

This is a beta launch so the tool is still a work in progress, but feel free to try it out and send me any feedback on what you like and don’t like.

The main benefit of this tool is to bring more traffic to your website by:

• Building more incoming links to your site
• Improving your search engine rankings
• Tracking your keyword rankings over time to see big picture SEO changes to your site

As you may know, building incoming links to your website is one of the best ways to improve your search engine rankings.  Seoaholic goes out to find “link opportunities” for you and ranks them by (1) how valuable the link would be if you got it (2) how likely you are to actually get a link from that site.  Seoaholic helps you (and your team) track the process of getting incoming links from those website owners.

A link opportunity is typically a page on a website that is already linking to your competitors or related websites, but they aren’t linking to you yet.  It might be a blog post, a list of resources, job posting board, etc.  You have a good chance of getting a link from these pages because they are already linking to sites like yours (by good I mean maybe 25% chance of success instead of 1% like most link building campaigns).  The last step is still up to you: contact the website owner to ask for a link, submit your site (if their site allows it), or write an interesting piece of content they would be likely to link to.  This last step is standard linking building stuff, and remains a manual process (we don’t want this to turn into a spamming tool).

The tool manages the rest for you (finding the high value opportunities, checking if they actually linked, managing your team’s progress, and seeing how it ultimately affects your rankings).  We imagine it being used by anyone from small time bloggers (who want to improve and track their search engine rankings over time) to hardcore SEO consultants who do this for a living.

Here Is A 90 Second Demo Video

If you don’t see the video embedded below (i.e. you’re reading this in email) you can click here to watch it on YouTube.  Click the “full screen” button below to get a better view or try it in HD.

And Here Are A Few Screen Shots (Click The Screenshot To See A Larger Version)

1. Discover new link opportunities and manage the link building process from one screen.

2. Track your website’s average search engine position over time plus total incoming links

3. Watch your individual keyword rankings vary and spot big picture SEO changes to your site

Try It Now For Free…

The first 5 keywords you want to track and build links for are absolutely free!  To try it out with your website just click here to sign up in 30 seconds.

Feel free to leave me any comments or feedback in the comments below!

Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong

This is sort of a funny topic I’ve been reading about recently, and I wanted to share some findings.  It’s mostly just meant for fun (mental masturbation in the wider sense of “breaking free”) but has some interesting long term implications.

Read on future King and Queens!

First Of All, Why Would You Want To Start Your Own Country?

This is usually people’s first reaction to the idea of starting a country, and rightfully so.

The simple answer is: you think you can make a better one.  Maybe where you currently live the government is annoying you in some way (like wars, taxes, environmental policies, oppression, extortion, etc – whatever you care about).  So after doing some strong letter writing campaigns that don’t accomplish anything, you start to look at what other countries are out there.  If you still haven’t found one you like, people eventually get the idea in their head that they could do better if they started one of their own!

But there is a more complex and serious answer to this as well.  Which is that there is a market for governments just like for anything else.  Allow me to explain.

When you go out for dinner you have to pick a place to eat.  You give the restaurant some money, and they give you some food and service in return.  If the food sucks you won’t go back, and if it’s great you tell all your friends about it and the restaurant thrives.  In short, there is a market for restaurants.  No surprise there.  This idea of “voting with your dollars” obviously works and encourages good restaurants.

But just like restaurants, there is a market for countries. You choose to pay money (taxes) to a government in exchange for some sort of services (military, roads, health care, etc).  And if you aren’t happy with the service, you can always leave and choose to patronize another country with your business.

But people rarely, if ever, choose to switch countries despite constantly complaining about the service.  Why is this?  Why doesn’t anyone seem very happy with their government, but you can find a pretty decent Italian restaurant in every city?  The answer turns out to be that the market for governments is inefficient.

We can see this by looking at two questions, and comparing the restaurant market to the government market:

• How easy is it to start your own?
  RESTAURANT: It’s relatively easy (get investors, incorporate, lease a space, hire some chefs).  Whether you will be successful or not is another story, but it’s at least not that difficult to try if you think you can make a better restaurant.   As proof of this you can see the thousands of new restaurants opening each year.

  COUNTRY: You need to discover new land (not possible anymore, every square inch of dirt on Earth is claimed by someone at this point), conquer another country by force to take their land, or pull off a military coup.  You could argue winning an election for president should be on this list, but that’s not really the same as having your own country – any country democratic enough to allow elections probably doesn’t give the president 100% power to do whatever they want in the same way an owner of a restaurant could.

• How easy is it to switch (as a customer) if you don’t like your current one?
  RESTAURANT: Easy.  Go down a few blocks.

  COUNTRY: Hard.  You’d probably have to quit your job, sell everything you own (house, car, etc), move away from everyone you know (unless you could convince them to come with you), and go through lots of paperwork to establish citizenship elsewhere.

What is the major consequence of this?   Well, it means that, on average, the service provided by governments is worse than the service provided by restaurants.  They can get away with it, because they know it’s such a pain for you to actually leave, and there are few other options even if you wanted to. Simply put, it’s an inefficient market.

To say “on average, it’s worse” may actually be too kind.  Indeed, governments on occasion actually murder thousands of their own citizens, so in some countries it’s not even close.  But even in the U.S. people have still occasionally gotten fed up enough to leave (when the draft was instated during the Vietnam war for example).  Compared to restaurants, the threshold is much lower.  I might not go back to a restaurant if the waiter was rude, or I just like the salsa at the other place.

So how can we make countries more like restaurants and get better service from them? Those two questions above hold the key.  Somehow, you’d have to make it easy for anyone to start a country, and easy for citizens to switch if they saw one they liked better.  Economists would call this lowering “barriers to entry” and reducing “switching costs”.  This is, at the risk of oversimplifying, what makes markets more efficient.  And more efficient markets make for better service because they have to compete against each other to win your business.

Now, you could easily say “but countries will never be as efficient as restaurants, they are far apart, natural barriers, etc, etc…”.  And I agree with you.  But efficiency exists along a spectrum, and the closer we get to the ideal, the more improvement we’ll see in government service.

To prove this to yourself you can take a quick look at cable companies.  They exist somewhere in between restaurants and governments on that spectrum (both in efficiency and service).  It’s harder to start a cable company than a restaurant (more capital required) and consequently fewer of them.  It’s also more difficult for customers to switch if they don’t like their cable company, because there are contracts and only one or two options in most neighborhoods.  It’s no accident that service provided by cable companies is far inferior to restaurants (“your food will arrive somewhere between the hours of 8am and 6pm tomorrow…”) but not nearly as bad as governments (cable companies haven’t murdered anyone yet, that I’m aware of).  My point here is that there is a range of efficiency in markets and it seems to correspond with a range in quality of service.  Any gains in making government markets more efficient would have some benefit, even if they don’t get all the way to restaurant levels.

So now that we’ve seen why someone might want to start their own country, you might be wondering…

Ok, So How Would You Actually Start One?

Let’s look at the three main ways people have tried over the years, with varying degrees of success, and a real life example for each.

1. Build Up A Man-Made Island

Ok this one is pretty hilarious.  In the 1970’s, a group of people (led by Las Vegas real estate millionarie Michael Oliver) took over this “island” that was just below sea-level (and thus unclaimed by any nation).

They brought in some barges of sand to bring it above sea level, and declared themselves the proud new owners of a country, which they dubbed “The Republic Of Minerva” because it was located on the Minerva Reefs in the Pacific.

They even made their own currency!

Unfortunately, the nearby nation of Tonga was not too happy about this new nation popping up in their back yard, and the Tongan King issued the following (very uncool) proclamation:

PROCLAMATION

His Majesty King Taufaʻahau Tupou IV in Council DOES HEREBY PROCLAIM:-

WHEREAS the Reefs known as North Minerva Reef and South Minerva Reef have long served as fishing grounds for the Tongan people and have long been regarded as belonging to the Kingdom of Tonga has now created on these Reefs islands known as Teleki Tokelau and Teleki Tonga; AND WHEREAS it is expedient that we should now confirm the rights of the Kingdom of Tonga to these islands; THEREFORE we do hereby AFFIRM and PROCLAIM that the islands, rocks, reefs, foreshores and waters lying within a radius of twelve miles [19.31 km] thereof are part of our Kingdom of Tonga.

Tongan troops (I can only imagine their military prowess) eventually came and took over the island, taking down the Republic of Minerva flag.  The founders were unwilling to defend the island (or to hire mercenaries like the next group described below), so they left and the island was eventually reclaimed by the sea :(

Whatever your thoughts on these guys, you at least gotta give them props for execution.  For all the people crazy enough to have this idea, how many of them actually went out and dumped sand into the ocean?  Well they did, way to walk the walk guys.

You can read more about the Republic of Minerva on wikipedia.  But in general, the idea of using a man-made island has a major flaw:  most “just below sea level” atolls are quite close to other countries and even if they are technically in international water, that country is quite likely to get jealous of your micro-nation and come kick your butt.  Be warned, if you decide to go this route, you should probably bring guns.

2. Take Over An Abandoned Sea Platform

This micro-nation, affectionately known as The Principality of Sealand, is stationed on a abandoned sea platform off the coast of Britain.  It is arguably, the most successful attempt to date to create a new country.

Back in the 1960’s, a guy named Roy Bates got fed up with the British government and decided to occupy it (it was abandoned after World War II when the British built it for naval defense from the Germans, and it resides in international waters also – a recurring theme here).  Roy was doing a bit of “pirate radio”, which is where you broadcast songs on your own radio station (without paying royalties).  The British government decided to crack down on his radio station, so he took the rather drastic step of moving it off shore and starting his own country while he was at it.

Here is a great little video on Sealand, if you want some background.  They even have a Facebook group you can join.

What makes Sealand perhaps the most successful micro-nation to date, is that it’s been around so long, and a hilarious story of a takeover attempt which led to the German government giving them a defacto recognition as a real country!

This story is almost too funny to believe, but apparently it really happened:

In 1978, while Bates was away, Alexander Achenbach, who describes himself as the Prime Minister of Sealand, and several German and Dutch citizens staged a forcible takeover of Roughs Tower, holding Bates’ son Michael captive, before releasing him several days later in the Netherlands. Bates thereupon enlisted armed assistance and, in a helicopter assault, retook the fort. He then held the invaders captive, claiming them as prisoners of war. Most participants in the invasion were repatriated at the cessation of the war, but Achenbach, a German lawyer who held a Sealand passport, was charged with treason against Sealand and was held unless he paid DM 75,000 (more than US$ 35,000). The governments of the Netherlands and Germany petitioned the British government for his release, but the United Kingdom disavowed his imprisonment, citing the 1968 court decision. Germany then sent a diplomat from its London embassy to Roughs Tower to negotiate for Achenbach’s release. Roy Bates relented after several weeks of negotiations and subsequently claimed that the diplomat’s visit constituted de facto recognition of Sealand by Germany.

You can read more in the Wikipedia article.

Roy Bates didn’t make the same mistake as the group above: we was willing to defend his land, and hired mercenaries to do it!

There are lots of other funny stories about Sealand, like the time ThePirateBay.com tried to buy it to store their web servers outside of any country’s jurisdiction, or the time Red Bull sponsored a sporting event there.  But despite Sealand’s success, there aren’t many of these abandoned platforms around for people to inhabit, so let’s take a look at one final solution people are proposing.

3. Buy A Floating Sea Colony

This option is known as “seasteading” – building a permanent residence on the sea which is somewhere in between an oil platform and a cruise ship.  It’s stabilized like an oil platform and is on piers to keep it above rough ocean waves, but has ballasts like a submarine so if necessary can float up a bit and be moved around (like if the King of Tonga comes after you).

If you think this is crazy (and it is), just keep in mind that both oil platforms and cruise ships prove something like this is already possible technology wise.

While these haven’t actually been built yet, there is a VERY good chance that they will in the near future.  The Seasteading Institute has received half a million in funding from one of the founders of Paypal to build a prototype – that’s serious money, and shows they aren’t just a couple of nut jobs posting ideas on the internet.

If you want to read more about it, they have a book (currently in draft form, freely available online) which lays out their ideas in more detail.  They seem to know what they’re doing.

So what will one of these cost?  Hard to say at this point – maybe $50-$100 million in total financing.  But you could buy a piece of land on it for less.  It’s likely these sort of countries will be funded early on by specialized industries like medical tourism, gambling, free trade ports, etc.  Something where their independence (low taxes, free trade, no regulations, etc) will give them an advantage.

You might think a country with no natural resources, a small land mass, and additional cost of importing all their food would be at a major disadvantage.  But then again, that is also a good description of a region like Hong Kong, and their economic growth rate over the last 25 years has left most other countries in the dust.  Freedom, it seems, might be sufficient for stellar economic growth, even if you have no natural resources.

Conclusion

So there you have it.  A quick overview of micro-nations and a glimpse of how we might start to see new countries pop up in the future.  It would be an interesting world to live in if anyone with $50 million bucks could start their own country (legally, and without killing anyone).

If you were into environmentalism, there would be a country for that.  If you cared about privacy, there would be a country for that.  If you wanted free health care or lower taxes or whatever, there would be a country for that.  It would be like new restaurants popping up all over, each trying to capture your heart and mind (and tax dollars) with the next great innovation in government.  There would be something for everyone, and innovation would take off at an incredible pace as all sorts of ideas were tested in the real world, instead of being relegated to “what if’s” in presidential debates.

It would be nice to see ads from all these countries, trying to win your business with the best service possible.  And if they didn’t live up to their promise, you wouldn’t be stuck – you could just float your house over to the next one.

Even if I never actually live on an island or platform in the ocean, I still think they are a good idea, just because they will put pressure on current governments to start shaping up.  It will lower that threshold where people get fed up enough to leave.  And the more competitive we can make governments to keep their citizens, the better service we’ll all get.

Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong

What’s holding you back from accomplishing your business goals this year?  This might help you stay on track…

OnlineProfits.com just re-launched their site.  I told people about this last year and it seemed to have pretty good feedback.

The people who teach this are pretty top notch in their industry, check out the contributors.  A few of these folks I’ve met and have helped me out with my own businesses.

Click a profile to read more on their site (they have a free newsletter on the reports page too).

Over the last month or so I’ve quietly rolled out some changes to BuyersVote. These were little things I discovered that I wanted while using the site.

Take note: this is one of the best reasons to build something (in a startup) that you actually want to use for yourself! If you’re an actual user, the software will be way better because when something is annoying or difficult you’ll fix it right away.

Address, Phone, and Websites on Items

Now you can enter an address, phone number, and website for an item.

This was really annoying before (especially for websites) – where you’d have to enter the website right in the title of the item because there was no other field for it.

Now if you enter these extra fields while editing an item, it will appear on the show page allowing you to visit the “External Site” with just one click, or Google Map it, etc.

Badges

Now on item pages there is a small badge that people can copy and paste into their website.  This would mainly be useful if it was your product and you wanted to show off reviews you were getting or encourage people to post more reviews.

There is also an SEO benefit to this to try and get more incoming links to the site.  This is something Neil Patel suggested to me a while back (check out my other post on user badges).

Improved Search

The search I had before sucked, and it wouldn’t find variations of words.  So for example if you were searching for “property managers” but the only listing in BuyersVote was for “property management companies” your search would return zero results.

Search is a hard problem.  A lot of websites try to implement their own which I think is a mistake (one I was guilty of).  It’s usually better to use Google Custom Search and integrate it into your website, so that’s what I did here.  This gives you the full power of Google search right on your own website.

So the search is a lot smarter now.

Revenue Generation (Affiliate links and Ads)

See the link that says “Check Prices On Amazon”?  This is new, and is an affiliate link.  When editing an item you will now see a checkbox like this at the bottom:

Checking that box will help BuyersVote generate a tiny bit of revenue when people click through to Amazon’s site and buy something.  Of course, there are a great many items on BuyersVote which aren’t sold on Amazon – hence the checkbox to crowd source this data.

There are also now Adsense ads in the bottom right of category pages.

Category Descriptions

There is also now an optional field on categories to add a short description.  Some categories weren’t quite clear without this.

This is how it looks on the actual page.

Contributor Pages

Contributor pages were pretty plain before.  Now they show all the most recent reviews a contributor has left in one place (along with a link to their personal website and a little about them).  Dave is currently the top contributor on BuyersVote (as voted by other users – see his reputation).  Gordie Rogers has contributed a ton also.  Thanks guys!  For more info on how reputation works check here.

Conclusion

There are a few more features I’d like to add eventually, namely an “Awards” page that highlights the best and worst rated products across all categories for the last month, year, all time, etc.  This would be great link bait.

Odds & Ends

Finally, few announcements.  I have a new web app (in the SEO space) coming out in a week or two here.  I’ll be sure to post here on the blog when it’s ready.

Also, I’ll be heading back to the San Francisco and leaving Buenos Aires in February!  While there for Christmas I met up with an awesome group of guys who are doing a Y-Combinator startup, and they asked me to join them in February.  It’s a really cool product and group, so I think it will be a great step for me.  So far I’ve been operating mostly on the fringe of the tech entrepreneurship scene (doing my own thing, traveling the world).  This has certainly had it’s advantages, but being in the valley and surrounding myself with the top tech entrepreneurs in the world will be a welcome change.  It’s really amazing what’s happening over there right now – in terms of potential to change the world (certainly technology wise) you’d be hard pressed to find a better place than the SF Bay Area.

Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong

So you just built the next great web app, the launch day has finally come and …. silence. Crickets chirping. You anxiously check your Google Analytics stats and see that despite having the coolest new website ever, nobody seems to care. More precisely, nobody knows about it yet.

This is one of the toughest moments for entrepreneurs (especially engineering types) when you realize that building the whole thing was the easy part.  Now it’s actually marketing the damn thing that is going to take a while.

Here are 5 ways I’ve used to launch a website and get the first users to my site.

1. Target Your Niche On StumbleUpon

Stumbleupon has a tech savvy base of people who are looking for cool websites just like yours.  When they are bored, they check Stumbleupon to see what cool new stuff has just been launched.

What’s great is that you can target the exact group who might be interested in your site.  For example, with BuyersVote.com I knew people into consumer info and possibly bargains would like the site, and I was able to target those groups.

Pros: Only $0.05 per visitor (way less than Adwords).  Can target people with relevant interests.  Can see a feedback report afterwards with what percent of people liked/disliked it.

Cons: Stumbleupon users are pretty click happy and are just trying to prevent boredom, so they tend to have a high bounce rate.  But then again, aren’t most web users?  This is a good test to see if your homepage is grabbing people’s attention.

2. Tell people your competition sucks

If you’re making a cheaper/better/faster alternative to an existing product, why not tell people that your competitor sucks?  Use their name right in the headline.  These ads tend to have a high click through rate, and your ideal early adopter is someone who is currently using the competition and is fed up.

Facebook ads work well for this, and their ad targeting is outstanding, but it can work elsewhere also like in Adwords or blog posts.  You may recall I launched FeedmailPro.com because I was fed up with Aweber and thought they sucked.

Pros: Works best when going against an established competitor.  Usually gets a high click through rate.

Cons: Sometimes you’ll run into problems using a trademark in your ad headline and Facebook or whoever will take it down.  But if it happens no biggie, you just take it down or reword it.  Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

3. Try to rank for long tail keywords

Traffic from organic search results is free, and 98% of people don’t click the ads when doing a Google search – they use the organic search results.  So obviously, ranking in search engines is great.  The problem is it’s very difficult for a brand new website.

The solution?  Target long tail keywords first – keywords which are more specific, have more words, are more obscure, etc.  One good way to make a long tail keyword is to add a city name or regional keyword on the end.

For UniversityTutor.com this is exactly what I did.  I had a couple dozen subjects (algebra, chemistry, Spanish, etc) and a bunch of cities (Austin, Boston, San Jose, etc) with tutors signed up.  So I combined the subject and the city name (and added ‘tutor’ in the middle) to auto-generate a bunch of long tail keywords, such as “calculus tutor Austin, TX”.  Then I auto-generated pages on the site that targeted those.  Within a few weeks I was getting 500 visitors per day (for free) from organic search results.

Even a brand new site can rank for long tail keywords with just on-page SEO.  If you can start getting traffic for long tail results, then you have early adopters who will eventually give you links, and you’ll eventually rank for more competitive keywords too (although this takes a while).  Oh yeah, and don’t forget to create a sitemap after you do this so Google actually finds the new pages.

Pros: Free!  Brings lots of traffic.

Cons: You need at least SOME good content on the pages for this to work.  It can be user-generated if your users are submitting content (this is best), otherwise you’ll have to generate it yourself.

4. Seed your site using Mechanical Turk

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is awesome, and some entrepreneurs are using this to seed content on their sites.  Basically you create a simple task that can be completed by a human being (write a review, tag this image, vote this up or down, etc) and assign a very low dollar amount to it (say $0.05 or $0.10).  Then you can publish these to Mechanical Turk and thousands of stay at home moms, bored librarians, and people all over the world will complete your task for a few cents and become early users of your website.

Sure, they are getting paid.  But it can help to generate the initial content on a site, even for the SEO trick mentioned in #3 above.  The task is completely open ended so some people also use it to get people’s feedback.  You can make the task something like “try this out and tell me what you like about it and what was confusing about it” if you just want to do user testing.

I tried this on BuyersVote.com and the results were pretty good.  The main thing you have to worry about is quality.  You can approve or reject each result that someone completes, and Mechanical Turk lets you adjust some quality controls like their approval rate from past requests and what country they are in, English speaking etc.  I’d say overall about 95% of the work completed was worth keeping, and about 5% needed cleaning up or deleting, which is decent.

Pros: It’s guarantees the person will actually participate in your site instead of just viewing it, like the other methods.

Cons: Keep an eye on quality and clean up any junk that gets posted.  Start small (maybe 10 tasks) and see results before going to 100, 1000, etc.  There is an art to making your task instructions clear for 100% of people.

5. Have a blog

I saved the best for last.  Having a blog is both the most powerful and the most long term approach.  It takes years of dedicated work to build up a good permission asset, but once you do it is worth it’s weight in gold.

37Signals launched Haystack.com in the blog post pictured above.  Just three days later Haystack.com had thousands of registered users and was generating revenue in excess of $7,000 per month.  Their marketing cost for this was zero. This was all possible because 37Signals has about 100,000 dedicated readers of their blog.

Joel Spolsky did the same thing when he launched StackOverflow.com with a blog post.  In the last 6 months it has become the #1 programming website in the world because of the critical mass it achieved from his (and his co-founder’s) blog posts.

Bottom line: if you don’t have a blog, you should start today because it will almost certainly pay off down the road.

Pros: It’s free.  These early adopters know you and actually care about the site (they aren’t being paid) which means they’ll probably tell their friends.  This is the most powerful form of marketing you can do.

Cons: Takes a long time to build a following on a blog.  You can’t start a blog just to promote stuff. It has to be a topic you actually care about and would write about even if nobody was reading it (because that’s exactly how it will feel for the first year or so).

Conclusion

There are a few other methods people use, like scraping competitors data off their site (not recommended from an ethical point of view although it can be effective in some cases) and of course you should definitely email it to your friends, your family, post it on your Facebook profile, etc (it’s surprising how many people don’t do this first and most obvious step – HotOrNot.com launched just by emailing a few friends and was receiving 2 million page page views per day just a few weeks later).

You might get lucky and have your site blow up without any serious marketing effort on your part, but in my experience (and from talking with other entrepreneurs) this is very very rare.  It’s far more likely that, even if you have the coolest product in the world, you’ll have to spend just as much time marketing it as you did building it, if not more.  Hopefully these tips help you out!

What techniques did I miss?  Which have worked best for you?  Please post your thoughts in the comments below.

Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong

Ok, so about a week ago I received an email from a Breaking Free reader.

He began “Dear Citizen Brian” and went on to explain that yes, he was in fact a real life super hero who dressed in costume and patrolled various areas of Australia, intimidating the criminal element.  He also wanted help spreading his message and building his blog.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this email, so I clicked through to his website and instantly fell in love.  There it was, a person who had a crazy idea of what he wanted to do and JUST WENT FOR IT, not giving a damn what anyone else thought.

He wanted to prevent crime, and had literally adopted a secret identity as a super hero.  Let me say it again: yes, he is actually serious.

I quickly added a new item to my list of things I MUST do before I die: interview this man and find out more about him.

Why? Because he is an example of someone who has truly broken free and pursued his passion.  If he can become a real life super hero, when what excuse do you and I have for not accomplishing our goals?

If you want some background first, you can check out his awesome FAQs, including more info on his armoury (which includes mace and an iPhone) and super powers (such as photographic memory).

Without further ado, here is my interview with the real life super hero, Captain Australia. (He took the liberty of recording some video responses as well.)  Enjoy!

1. Please introduce yourself to my readers and tell us a bit about your mission

I am Captain Australia, and I am on a Quest to make the world a better place.  My mission in a nutshell: To fight evil.

What is evil ? It’s everywhere .. evil has been with us of old. My job is to fight it – the big evil: criminality, paedophilia, rape of the environment, and the little evil – apathy, selfishness, greed. Basically my mission is as much about being an example and inspiration as it is about actively fighting crime.

So, to articulate my goals in a simple list, with simple examples:

1. Patrol, and directly intimidate the criminal element (eg, drug dealers and prostitutes move out of neighbourhoods I patrol)
2. Directly intervene if I see a crime, and solve crimes I become aware of (eg, if I see someone being robbed or assaulted, I must stop it)
3. Help others. (that simple, I want to find ways to help people, Nelson Hendersen said “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit”)
4. Inspire people. (eg, by putting other people ahead of my own personal safety, by taking a stand against evil, I hope to inspire others to stand up and make the world better, Martin Luther King Jr said “…I just want .. love and .. justice and .. truth and .. commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world”)

2. What’s the most common reaction you get from people at first? How do you convince them you’re serious?

Most people are amused. They want photographs, as if I’m some kind of celebrity. I don’t mind, so much – if I can’t inspire people the first time I meet them, I can at least reach out to them, and I can settle for amusing them. If they then see me, witness my mission, and come to understand what I do, then it is my hope that it will influence them.

So far, people tend to fall into a few different categories (I personally like #4 the most, it makes me smile):

1. Avoidance or Apathy: some people seem shocked or scared, and simply look away, they simply lower their gaze and shuffle past as fast as they can. (These are the sleep-walkers that I hope to wake up)
2. Curious: some people are engaged and interested (maybe amused), and ask me questions about what I’m doing & why. I see these people as genuine potential evangelists, people who can see value in what I’m doing and maybe allow it to influence the way they live their lives somehow.
3. Photo Op: some people simply see me as a novelty and want a photo with me. Where I can, I try to explain my mission, and turn them into a #2
4. genuinely puzzled: some people simply openly stare at me, jaw dropping, every manner of their posture screaming out to me “WTF?!”, sometimes the reaction is so strong, it’s almost as if a spaceship landed in front of them, Ronald McDonald sprang out from the cockpit & started singing “Happy Birthday to You”

With respect to the second half of your question – how do I convince them I’m serious – well, that’s complicated. At first I was more interested in seeking out crime – people’s reactions didnt really matter to me. Now I realise that connecting with people, helping & inspiring people is a critical part of my mission. So when I meet someone who is Curious, I explain to them what I’m doing and why. I give them a calling card, and let them know that if they need my help, they should contact me.

Only short-fall – I have one cellphone – and giving it out to Citizens will compromise my secret identity. I’m just going to have to absorb the operating cost and get a second phone so that people can ring Captain Australia when they need his help or advice .. so far the calling cards just have Email, Twitter & Web contacts, which seems slow if they want to talk to me while I’m out on patrol.

3. How often do you go out on patrol in full costume? How do you choose locations?

If I were untethered by any other consideration than Captain Australia, I’d actually choose hotspots around the world (based on crime, poverty, apathy – basically profile possible areas to base out of). I’d patrol daily, doing whatever I can to demonstrate my commitment to changing lives in that area. Every few months, I’d move on to another area. As it stands, I operate out of Brisbane Australia, and when my employer requires me to travel, I also tear open my corporate shirt & tie revealing the bold @ underneath – so sometimes I get the opportunity to patrol in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth or New Zealand (and hopefully at some stage Singapore, where I know that organised crime and prostitution has a real underbelly).

For now, I simply base my choice on known areas of crime in Brisbane, or areas known for homelessness (to help where I can), finally, I might just patrol a public area to achieve a level of visibility – as a deterrent and to spread the inspirational message. With my work obligations, I can only really patrol once per week. And the last few weeks Ive been on hiatus while I get my health right (I actually injured my foot with Version1 boots while Parkour Street Running, and the nail of my big toe came off .. so while I’m waiting on Boots Version2 – being ordered from the USA – I havent been patrolling weekly, but I’ll resume that as soon as the boots arrive).

4. Why do you feel it is important to protect your identity?

My family. I don’t wear a mask out of shame, I wear it purely to protect my family (and make a statement).I know that I may not achieve a notable impact against crime, that is largely about luck & circumstance. But I do know that its possible that my interference could offend drug dealers, pimps, gangs, thugs – my own safety is secondary, but I simply cannot face putting my family at risk. Also, it’s loosely possible that I might attract crazies – some loony out there might consider me to be their ‘nemesis’ and decide that they need to track me down and teach me about suffering. Again, I can handle myself, but God help the person who tries to reach past me to harm my family.

I won’t compromise my secret identity by giving any significant detail on this point.

5. Many of our readers are interested in “breaking free” – meaning doing what they are passionate about in life, as you obviously have – but money often holds people back. Do you have a “real job” during the day (Clark Kent worked at the Daily Planet, Bruce Wayne had Wayne Enterprises) or how do you fund Captain Australia’s endeavors?

Short answer: Yes. Although I’ve hardly broken free from it – in fact, being Captain Australia isn’t cheap – I would absolutely love to fund some higher tech equipment and a costume that really affords me some protection against weaponry – but as it is, I have to fund what I’m doing. I have a reasonably lucrative career. I won’t give too much detail, again to protect my secret identity, but it’s basically a middle->high level management position in corporate australia. Its more than adequate to support my personal life and my expenses so far as Captain Australia.

6. Clearly making money is not the primary goal with a project like this, but do you view the blog as potentially a means of financial support (Captain Australia t-shirts, ad-support, donations from concerned citizens, etc) or solely as a means to spread the word?

I have thought about that. I would love to find a way to fund this full-time (and ideally unlock travel to some of the bleaker places of the world – places of socio-economic depression where I can rally people). Ultimately it is secondary though, I’ve thought about the possibility of maybe getting some T-shirts done up, or maybe a graphic novel – I don’t really know – honestly though, it does open up the dream of committing myself full-time to my mission, which I find immensely appealing. I dont like the idea of donations at all (unless maybe Bill Gates flicked 2M my way – I think 2M is all I would need to invest to permanently fund my efforts as Captain Australia – just use it to generate income from the interest). Maybe advertising or some kind of merchandise – but it’s really not what I’m about – it’s just a daydream to be able to do this full time.

7. I like your choice of “weapons” – spray can of mace, camera, pen and paper, etc and you strike me as someone who uses violence as a last resort. Although I have a concealed handgun license, I personally believe these non-lethal methods of self-defense can be more effective. Please tell our readers about your philosophy in the best way to prevent crimes, what level of violence is appropriate/necessary in what situation, and how our readers can best protect themselves.

Confidence is your best weapon. Most criminals are cowards. I know that sounds like a naive cliche, but I promise you, it’s true. They generally won’t act unless the odds are in their favour. That’s what makes me powerful. I will move forward -despite- the odds. I will put my personal safety to one side and challenge anybody that I feel is evil. I will never stand idly by and watch someone who is innocent be victimised. Is violence an effective tool ? Yes, it can be. But you have to use it fearlessly. You have to act quickly and deliberately. Personally, except for totally random incidents, I think that your best tool is actually politics – using negotiation skills to defuse hostile situations, using respect to get potentially violent people to calm down and articulate their views without hostility.

Since putting on Captain Australia’s mask, I havent had to be violent. I’ll address my martial arts training in one of the questions to follow – but I do sincerely think violence is a last resort. As far as serious advice goes – unless the odds are clearly in your favour, if someone threatens you: talk calmly to them while you conduct a risk assessment. Look them over and the environment, and make a determination as to whether you should fight or run. If they have already threatened you and are just toying with you or trying to intimidate you, use the element of surprise before you act. Do 1 of 2 things: attack fast & hard, or attack suddenly and then immediately run. (If you slap someone in the face, or kick their knee or in-step, the surprise will often give you a few valuable seconds. Don’t scream or yell when you run, put all your wind into sprinting).

Weapons arent the way forward. The human tendency to reach for a weapon is driven out of cowardice and a craving for power. It’s putting down our weapons that takes true courage.

8. What are your views on firearms and do you believe an armed population prevents crime or creates more of it? There have been several high profile cases (at least in the U.S.) of citizens killing criminals (see Joe Horn and Bernhard Goetz). They’ve subsequently been called everything from heroes to criminals themselves. What are your views?

Fundamentally, I believe in complying with Rule of Law, it’s basically the collectively agreed set of rules that we all have to live by: and people who knowingly take a gun and shoot someone else are committing an unlawful act. They have no jurisdictional right to execute anybody. I think its quite clear that they are criminals.It’s my sincere belief that taking another human life for anything other than a grim and high duty is morally wrong. I’d have to pose – do these guys who pump bullets into criminals get a rush when they do it ? Do you think sometimes at night they think about it as they go to sleep, and smile ? I think that you can work within the confines of the law and still have perfectly reasonable methods to interfere with criminals.

If someone breaks into your home in the still of night, I think its completely acceptable to use deadly force to protect your family. But personally, I condemn someone who will strap on a gun and go out looking for people to kill. I understand that the US legal system (and Australian) could be described as unreliable, but that doesnt mean that I personally am any better.

If you see someone being attacked, you jump in and incapacitate the assailant. You dont need a chainsaw, bazooka, machete, or a .357 magnum to do that.

I’d prefer to lay down my own life than risk killing an innocent person. Again, I think putting down a weapon takes a whole lot more courage than picking one up.

9. You appear to be a martial arts expert. Which style of martial arts should people learn if they are primarily concerned with self defense?

I’ve been learning since child-hood. I’m expert in Judo, Ju-jitsu, Karate, Wing Chun & Ton Long Kung fu. I also have some experience with boxing (which is actually quite handy – I think it helps you to learn how to take a punch and not fear it, the other martial arts styles try to avoid being hit).If I had to recommend a fighting style for self defense, I think Ju-jitsu is extremely practical. It teaches grapples and strikes – ways to move your hands and body to lock up your attacker and minimise their ability to hurt you. Someone who has really trained in ju-jitsu can easily hold one assailant by the wrist, using pain to steer him around using him as a shield against a second combatant while he kicks the third in the instep and incapacitates him. Its a very practical fighting form.

But if you’re only interested in self protection, you can avoid the training and get various non-lethal sprays and personal alarms.

10. What would be an ideal contact for you to make (TV interview, speaking to a class of children, profile on major website, etc) to further your mission? Perhaps one of our readers can make the introduction.

I dont know. I’m currently arranging to spend some time with sick kids in critical care, to cheer them up and amuse them – basically I’m struggling to find the correct path for me to be walking. If I thought about it purely in terms of exposure, I guess getting into the mainstream media would be useful, but what I really want, more so than fame, is the individual engagement – helping people and spreading my message that we must all take a personal stand to brighten the world. (Which can start with a single candle).

Thank you Captain Australia for making time for this interview!

If you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe to his website and show your support for Captain Australia.

I would not be surprised if Captain Australia becomes an internet sensation and you’re not going to want to miss his rise to fame- I think this could be big.

Finally Captain Australia has asked for your support in the following ways:

• Please send him suggestions and tips on how he can better accomplish his mission
• Please ask for his help if you need support or wish to report a crime/disturbance in your neighborhood (especially if you live in Australia)

Captain Australia, we salute you!  Until next time, keep breaking free,
Brian Armstrong

I was watching this video today about how to stand out in your market place.  It gives some good examples of companies (like VooDoo Donut and ZipCar) who created a strong following by:

1. Doing something different
2. Having fun
3. Not being afraid to be a little weird

It reminded me of Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” button or Facebook’s Pirate language setting.

It also reminded me of some of the ideas I wrote about in word of mouth marketing.

Then I started looking at the BuyersVote.com homepage and I got sort of sad.  It looked really boring.

It looked like every other review site out there.  If I saw it for the first time, I’d probably be sort of confused, do a few clicks, and then leave.

So I started wondering, what is this website actually ABOUT damnit.  It’s got to convey it instantly.  And I blurted out “it just so you can find out if something sucks or not before you buy it!”

So I decided to change the tag-line of the site from “Online product reviews made easy” to “Find out if it sucks, before you buy!”

Irreverent?  Yes.  Junevile?  Probably.  Fun and engaging?  I think so.  At least it would cause me to give it a second look, and maybe even participate in this community – it’s sounds fun.

What do you think?  Worst idea ever or good marketing?  I think I’ll test it out for a bit.

P.S. Because it worked out so well last time, I’ve started a new category on BuyersVote for “Best Christmas Gift Ideas 2009“.  Hopefully you’ll find it useful as you do your last minute Christmas shopping.  Please take a moment to go check it out now – and don’t forget to vote or add your own idea if you have a good one.  Thanks!

Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong

Here is a question from a Breaking Free reader….

Dear Brian,

Your book inspired me to start up my own business based on your Start Breaking Free model.

I was a lawyer working 80 hour weeks at an international firm, doomed to spending the best years of my life behind a desk. I was depressed and my confidence was taking a battering from my unhappy, over critical, negative, unhealthy and institutionalized colleagues.

After reading your book I started to ponder how, if at all, I could escape the rat race.

My answer came a few short weeks after reading your book. If I was working 80 hours a week and making less than a third of my billing target, where was the rest of the money going? After weeks of research I found out that it was going to a combination of a) the under worked over paid partners b) the lazy and inefficient staff and c) the office, stationary, IT and other such expenses.

I decided to setup a service that has none of these expenses and that offers lawyers a better life and businesses a cheaper more efficient service. I set up Matrix Law Group which places lawyers with businesses on a temporary employee basis and which allows those lawyers to work either remotely or from the business’ office (so no office).

I advertise in a few small business publications over here and then hire someone, including myself out (like a temp agency) and charge businesses a low hourly rate (we have no overheads so can undercut traditional law firms). I now work about about 7 to 10 hours a week at £100 an hour and because of more favourable tax treatments, I make a decent wage but a less than I did when I was working 80 hours a week. But guess what? I am much much happier and healthier.

I won’t lie, getting business is not easy, specially since I have to do all my marketing myself.

My question to you is whether you can offer me any advice on marketing myself and my business? My website is www.matrixlawgroup.com, other than that, and a few adverts, I have no other marketing tools. Law is one of those industries that works on a word of mouth basis. I am therefore trying to approach people, such as yourself, to get advice.

Thank you for inspiring me to change my life.

Keep breaking free.
Patrick

Hey Patrick,

Wow I love it!  I think it’s a great idea and will save people lots of money (the perfect sales pitch at this time).

I’m not sure if you designed the site like this intentionally, but it came across somewhat web 2.0 ish or futuristic.  At least for me I’d prefer to see something more professional and old fashioned looking for a legal site, that instills a sense of quality.  Up to you of course, just thought I’d mention it.  Did you think about listing the available lawyers on the site as well with some sort of profile?

Anyway, I think you’re off to a great start. I actually thought about doing something similar a while back (the UniversityTutor of lawyers sort of thing) but decided to focus just on tutors right now.  As for marketing, a couple things come to mind…start blogging, put in the title long tail keywords which you may rank for easier at first (less competitive).  Make blog posts naming specific companies and how they could improve their legal costs.  By calling them out publicly you can get some attention/controversy.  Maybe even make outrageous challenges…for example, you can publicly offer to complete some legal task for free for someone, just to prove how much lower your costs (number of hours) would have been, and then show the work for people to compare quality.

Overall, I think giving away your services for free at first could be great marketing.  Basically…

1. get in touch with some business
2. ask them what their current legal fees are costing them
3. if it’s a good fit, offer to do the work they were paying these other guys for for FREE for a month
4. after that if they aren’t happy with the results then you part ways, if they are happy then they can consider hiring you at your agreed upon rate (highly likely to happen if you work is good)

Some people call this risk reversal – essentially removing 100% of the risk for someone to try you out so you can prove the benefit to them.  Charlie Hoehn’s book, Free Work, makes a great case for this.

UPDATE: this Mixergy interview with Neil Patel has some great examples of how free work brought in new business.  Neil says “don’t charge celebs or high profile people, take publicity/contacts instead of payment”.

This is just to get started…once you have some regular customers, the referrals will start coming in.  Good luck!

Brian Armstrong

P.S. What do other Breaking Free readers think about Patrick’s idea and website?  Feel free to leave him a comment below and check out his site.

Andrew Warner and I put together a little entrepreneur meetup last night which turned out really well.

Well actually, I emailed Andrew when I saw on his blog that he was in Buenos Aires, and he had the great idea to post the meeting to Hacker News.  It ended up being a pretty good turnout.

Buenos Aires is turning into quite the little tech entrepreneur scene.  As I wrote on Hacker News…

It does seem like something is brewing here. I think it got popular with Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Work Week where he talks about Buenos Aires…lots of founders came down here. It’s easier to bootstrap a web business because:

1. costs are much lower here

2. earning in dollars and spending in pesos means your money goes a long way (geo-arbitrage)

It’s by no means huge yet, but there is a band of renegade expat coder/entrepreneurs I’ve met up with here that are doing some impressive stuff.

Here is a sampling of the attendees (in alphabetical order) and the projects they’re working on.  Take a minute to check out their sites, there is some pretty impressive work being done by this group…

• Andrew Warner Mixergy.com (awesome interviews with entrepreneurs – and he’s a highly successful entrepreneur to boot, check out his about page)
• Andy Cary from BecomeACelebrityJournalist.com (new ebook that just came out)
• Brian Cary from InfusedIndustries.com (they make a shopping cart that fits right in a banner ad)
• Chad Depue from RubyRescue.com (heads up a kick ass Rails dev team)
• Eric Knudtson from ExpatQA.com (an awesome question and answer community for ex-pats, the format of the site is addictive, way better than a typical forum, and is built on the StackExchange platform) and EricKnudtson.com
• Fernando Parra http://fparra.com.ar/
• James Cox http://twitter.com/imajes
• Javier Sitaker http://www.dist-exp.com (computer consultants and also check here if you want to know how to deal with the bureaucrazy in starting a business in Argentina)
• Leonard Lin sched.org (an agenda builder for conferences and great domain name)
• Mike Manning GoBigMike.com (holy crap he traveled to 28 countries last year?!) and TrackYourHours.com (700 paying customers!)
• Manuel http://twitter.com/mergoc
• Taylor McKnight also from sched.org
• Tom Aadland from BuenaCarta.com (a soon to be launched restaurant review site for Buenos Aires)
• Simon Bottling EnBuenosAires.com (an MLS system for real estate in Buenos Aires)
• Vik Duggal from VikDuggal.com (check out his video blog) and Konstructr.com

There was a lot of talent in the room.  Sorry if I didn’t get a chance to talk with some of you!  Feel free to add your info in the comments if you want to be invited to the next one.  Thanks!

Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong