Clutterme Blog

Funny Twitter Video

2009-03-26T14:19:00.004-04:00

Twitter has never been mentioned on this blog before and one of us has been quietly hoping that the service would fade into obscurity for some time. I have to admit however that after visiting twitter for the 4th time in just over two years, I finally got the attraction of the service.

The problem (and hilarity) of twitter though is two-fold:

1) People's lives are never as exciting as they think they are.

2) Some individuals tend to tweet unrestrainedly.

The previous two points are summed up nicely in this cute video about Twittering:

Yes, we do realize the hypocrisy in dedicating an entire blog post to irrelevant twitter posts.

Competitors to Clutterme

2009-03-17T17:04:00.005-04:00

Just got an e-mail about new features from one of our competitors and it gave us the idea of aggregating all of our competitors and similar services into one blog post and sharing them with you guys, our readers and our users:

The ones listed have received our SEAL of APPROVAL, there are probably tons more out there that we don't know about and we've shown you how to find them as well.

Web Based Website Creators:

Wix.com
Synthasite
Squidoo
Sampa
Wetpaint - My recommendation
MyFamily
Webnode
Jimdo
Jottit
Piczo - for kids
SnapPages
+ more

Web Based Blog Creators:
Blogger
Weebly - Alex's recommendation
Wordpress
Clearblogs
+more

Desktop based software packages:
MS Frontpage (not free)
Dreamweaver (not free)
+ more

How do you find the '+more'?
Do a search for one of the sites on the list on Google. And click on the 'Similar Pages' link you see in the Search result. Below is a screenshot of a search result for Sampa.com and the link you should click on is highlighted in purple.

Thoughts on the new Facebook homepage

2009-03-16T20:13:00.004-04:00

Facebook released a new version of the homepage.

My two initial reactions are:

It's going to stink for apps.
Facebook is killing its own page views

It turns out that I was right about #1. Our apps have seen about 50% less traffic than after the homepage redesign.

I am still undecided about #2. From my personal experience I find myself doing fewer pageviews for the simple reason that all the interesting and good information is... hidden. Well, I know HOW to access it but it's not right in from of me.

Two examples,

I still don't know HOW to access tagged photos of friends from the Photos application. This one I'll need help with.
Easy links to the 'Events' application are nowhere to be found.

As a facebook user, tagged photos and Events are probably 2 out of the Top 5 things I look at the most and I find that in general facebook is harder to mine the data I want to get out of it... what are my friends doing. Facebook seems to have increased the noise for me with the redesign.

Also, Facebook made their own ads smaller and less intrusive, which I found as quite the surprise.

On a positive note I hear Facebook streamlined the mini-feed to be a more accurate representation of the main news feed stories. Meaning that if a story doesn't appear in the mini-feed it won't appear in your friends homepages. The change is a welcome one compared to the mini-feed/main feed ambiguity that preceded it.

The feasibility of $700,000 /mo. on Socialmedia, revisited.

2009-03-11T16:53:00.012-04:00

Socialmedia to the best of my knowledge, does not do incentivized offers. Incentivized offers, done by companies such as Offerpal Media, Peanut Labs and Gambit, let users complete CPA offers for points or other forms of currency on a Facebook app. Some CPA networks also provide this functionality in the form of postbacks after an offer has been successfully completed. CPA Storm is an example of such a network.

But Socialmedia, to the best of my knowledge, does not do incentivized offers although its display ads often advertise CPA offers. The $700K therefore must only from display advertising. This will allow us to examine the feasibility of making $700K from pageviews alone, behold.

If you haven't read my last post, I call Socialmedia out as either either proud, lying or stupid. Let's revisit the post, this time with numbers.

The average eCPM for a publisher running Socialmedia ads hovers around $0.40 eCPM for a 645x60 banner ad at the top of the canvas page. Skillfully placed, a developer can probably milk an eCPM of around $2 - from either increasing # of ad units used or by placing them near a button with high click-throughs. Assuming the developer in question is fairly skilled and competent we can grant him an eCPM of $2.

To make $700K from display advertising one therefore needs 350 million canvas page impressions or, assuming 10 page views per visit, 35 million visits, per month. Our own apps, which I consider very page view intensive hover around 6-8 page views/visit per month.

The top app on Facebook, Causes, has only 26 million visits per month. The 'monthly active user' number is a synonym for monthly visits.

BUT nobody said that the money came from only one app. The developer earning $700K per month could theoretically have 10 applications each with 2 million visits per month. Then the number becomes entirely possible via display advertising.

Inevitably the next question becomes, who is it? I'll offer 100 hits in free traffic to anyone who wants to go through the most popular apps in the application database and try to figure it out. Dead serious.

So in conclusion, my initial reaction was incorrect and $700,000/mo. is entirely possible from display advertising alone, and its very possible that Socialmedia serves those ads. However to quell worries that everyone is missing out on the gold rush, ever since facebook redesigned the homepage several days ago, traffic on our applications has halved (and they were already at 10% of their peak traffic in Jan 2008). It also doesn't help that most of our apps are contest based - a recipe for shark-fin type traffic.

Also an addendum to my last post, I forgot to imagine the possibility that Socialmedia wanted to remain anonymous in the leak and maybe TC blew their cover, which in the spirit of the recent The Rules Apply to Everyone post is more than plausible. So that makes Socialmedia desperately stupid.

Mark is the creator of several successful facebook apps.

$700 000/month with Social Media, unlikely.

2009-03-11T16:29:00.022-04:00

A couple days ago someone at Socialmedia leaked the news that an anonymous developer was making $700,000/month on their network. After sitting on the pot for about two hours [non medically related emergency] I have this to conclude about Socialmedia's deliberate leak. Someone is either lying, proud, or stupid.

If the post is true, then the amount of publishers Socialmedia stands to attract is marginal compared to what they stand to lose, namely, their $700K/mo. earning publisher.

Risking the exposure of their top publisher is not a wise business decision for a number of reasons. First of all, the publisher risks being poached by another ad network offering more gold. Secondly, the publisher might leave on his own volition, being put off by Socialmedia's brazenness.

Another scenario arises if the publisher for some reason forced the leak with Socialmedia - for pride as an example. Then Socialmedia wouldn't have been smart to oblige.

Socialmedia can get spared one of the titles of proud, stupid or lying if the following scenario holds true, that they had made the leak with foreknowledge that the publisher was going to walk indisputably and imminently.

As a publisher and former advertiser on Socialmedia the leak raised a number of red flags. First, in January eCPMs plummeted to around $0.10 for Canadian traffic as an advertiser. Secondly, publishers globally have been running at an eCPM of $0.40 on average since January.

The reality is that various facebook design iterations and changes to app bookmarking have reduced the prominence and emphasis of applications on facebook - for better or for worse. Few apps are getting more traffic than they were 1 year ago and the forums certainly reflect these somber outlooks. [Ex.]

Mark is the founder of Clutterme Inc. and the creator of 22 facebook applications, 7 of which can be considered successful.

Something that took us 12 months to learn...

2009-01-29T15:50:00.005-05:00

Don't write any code for your business unless the code directly relates to one or both of the following...

It seems pretty simple but a lot of our time in 2008 was spent creating features that didn't make us money or didn't get us users. It was a learning experience.

And when you have users, you can add a third bullet point.

3) Keep existing users from leaving.
We probably wouldn't have learned any of these lessons if it wasn't for the success of our facebook apps. We then backported that success to make Clutterme.com moderately successful and ramen profitable.

A new funding model between micro and macro

2009-01-24T15:10:00.020-05:00

Incubators such as YC and Techstars are great for first time software-based entrepreneurs. Software entrepreneurs with programming backgrounds can work on their idea without cash, running on adrenaline alone to code their site, but they might eventually need introductions for future funding if that's an option.

Venture Capital is great at addressing the long-term funding needs of a small software start-up or the short-term funding needs of a high capital expenditure start-up such as those you would find in the hardware or high HR intensive fields.

In my opinion the sweet spot for a team of 2 software based entrepreneurs is $350K. A small software team could stretch $350K for 18, maybe 24 months. The per annum expenses can be around:

$25k - office space, Internet, Hydro, chairs, travel
$70-$90k - Founders Salaries
$50-$75k - Lawyer fees, accounting fees, outsourcing UI and design.

After 18 months a good software start-up should have a working product, users, and will hopefully be ramen profitable. Almost as importantly, any start-up prime for investment should have momentum going forward in a broad sense.

So how much should be given up, in terms of equity, for this new funding model?

10-30% would be my answer.

Too many file folders...

2009-01-14T23:21:00.006-05:00

Alex realized over the weekend that we were approaching 32000 file folders in our root sub-directory. I'm not sure of the technical implications but Alex was frantically working until 4am to find a workaround. Maybe Alex can better explain the significant of 32K folders in a future post.

This is a roundabout way of announcing that we've surpassed 30000 registered users. At our current sign up rate we will hit 100000 sign ups before the end of 2009.

Stats II

2008-12-17T17:18:00.004-05:00

22000 users.
141 Domain Purchases.

November was a good month traffic wise, our Analytics are generally in line with that Compete and Alexa give us for us.

Conversion Rates

2008-12-08T17:35:00.002-05:00

We're on the look-out for a good payments solution. If you know any good ones please feel free to drop us a line.

We've been switching back and forth between Website Payments Pro (Paypal) and the payment solution offered to us through Register.com. Each system however has its complications.

Feel free to share with us your experiences, is it worth switching to Moneris perhaps?

E-mail and Domain Forwarding

2008-11-11T18:08:00.005-05:00

We've just launched two new features for upgraded users. You can now set up to 50 e-mail accounts per domain and forward those e-mails to an address of your choice (we recommend gmail to manage multiple domains). And you can now forward your .com to a URL of your choice.

A big thank you to our servicemen past and present on this day November 11th.

Clutterme Now Accepts Paypal

2008-10-31T00:34:00.004-04:00

We now accept Paypal for domains. Clutterme is also going to introduce new price points at 3 months and 6 month subscription services. Since we've launched domain registrations we've registered over 30 new domains and created over 1000 new free registrations.

Status Update - Oct 29th

2008-10-29T17:42:00.003-04:00

How are we doing? We just completed our Tax Returns for our first fiscal year (Aug-Aug) and there were some things that surprised us.

We made $40 000 in revenue. It might seem like a lot (if you're us) or not a lot (if you're not us necessarily) but wow, making money was hard but for a learning year, we did OK.

Our expenses were quite small. If you exclude money for lawyers (patent, incoroporation fees) our expenses wouldn't even total half our revenues.

Per hour, we get paid around $2. Or at least we did during our first year.

These are quite interesting facts. We'll have to do a similar update for year 2.

Multiple Pages are in Beta

2008-10-20T15:15:00.004-04:00

We've released multiple pages with one caveat, right now they're only available to users who've purchased a .com, .org or other domain name through our site. We plan on releasing the feature to all of our users shortly, right after we add some nifty new domain forwarding features for our upgraded users.

Whisper...

2008-10-09T17:06:00.002-04:00

We've been toting it for a while now, but multiple pages are finally on the horizon. They'll be ready in some form or another by next Thursday the latest.

Become a Clutterme Affiliate

2008-10-02T15:35:00.007-04:00

Clutterme is already the easiest way to create a webpage online - $0.99 per domain and $0.24 per day for hosting and now you can get in on the action.

Today we're introducing the Clutterme affiliate program. Refer a friend to purchase a domain through Clutterme and you earn a cool $35 USD. How does this work?

Sign into your Clutterme account (or create an account if you don't already have one) and get your Referrals links - they're under the referral tab.

For each person that signs up and upgrades their account through your referral link we will pay you $35, no questions asked. Except one, which is where do we send the check?

Clutterme, still the easiest way to create webpages online.

*Edit* We will ask some questions such as name, address and phone number to confirm your identity. We will also place a 30 day hold on all payments.

We've (Re)-Launched!

2008-09-29T17:20:00.003-04:00

If you've been peering around Clutterme this past week you might notice some pretty big changes. We've completely redesigned the site and now allow users to attach domains to their pages.

So now www.clutterme.com/mark can become www.markmolckovsky.com (check out my simple one page website) ;) We're looking to add more features to make webpage creation easier.

We're now working hard to introduce multiple pages to user's accounts in our goal to become the easiest way to make a website online.

Cheers,
Mark & Alex

Clutterme Labs

2008-07-29T13:56:00.003-04:00

We've just released a truncated form of Clutterme embedding. This version allows you to directly embed your Clutterme page onto your website and it will overlay on top of any existing content.

Clutterme labs is also pretty neat because it allows you to edit your Clutterme content directly on your website. So it transforms your whitespace into an editable whitespace similar to Clutterme's. We thought this was pretty cool.

Thanks also to some back end overhaul Clutterme loads faster in Internet Explorer and as far as I can tell, Safari as well.

Bad Scam

2008-07-17T23:54:00.002-04:00

One of the worst scams on the Internet are stuff known as 'My Luv Crush' and 'You're Perfect Match'. You enter your cell phone number, usually baited with some promise of calculating your love percentage and then confirm the PIN that is sent to you.

This enrolls you into a subscription that charges you $xx per text message or $xx per day. Either way, you end up paying through your nose, don't know how to cancel the subscription and by the time you get your first bill the damage is done - and you're probably still up the creek on how to cancel.

Luckily the Internet is also full of solutions. So if you read this, just txt the word 'STOP' in reply to one of the messages and they'll stop sending them to you. I hate these offers on the Internets and it's unfortunate that so many people are making so much money of these scams.

PLEASE DON'T FALL FOR THIS.

How much is a Facebook App Worth?

2008-07-10T14:44:00.002-04:00

There are a lot of metrics that help valuate how much a website and Facebook app is worth. The two that matter to me if I was buying it are... how many links can I drive with it and how effectively can I market it.

First of all, let's say that a non focused click from a US user is worth $0.10. If I can drive 1000 clicks a day from my website/app then I'm getting around $36000 a year in value, assuming the traffic is stable and not growing.

If I had the cash I would buy a property like that for $72 000. $0.10 per click is a great price. I haven't been able to find anything on an ad network under $0.15 a click for US traffic.

As a rough estimate we used to drive around 1000 clicks from 10000 daily active users. You could probably push that to 1500 if you really tried, but 1000 clicks per 10k DAU is a good base.

Most apps have special themes like Vampires or Werewolves. To get the 1K for 10K you need to be a bit creative and do some ties-in like '9/10 werewolves use ____ website'. We've always used tie-ins and it's never terribly difficult to get a good idea.

More nefarious app owners use notifications and e-mails to reach dormant users. An e-mail to a user is at least worth $0.01. We've done tests and a 1% e-mail CTR is about standard. It's important to note that all e-mails make the user's inbox.

I'm saying that an empty Facebook application can be worth it for the e-mails. $0.01 an e-mail. Any active users it has is gravy.

So my floor valuation for any app would be $0.01 per install + $72000 for every 10 000 DAU. Anything at that price or lower I'd recommend a buy.

The number one question we get asked...

2008-07-09T01:01:00.008-04:00

The number one question we get asked is 'what are you doing right now?'. Everyone asks this and rightfully so, because no one aside from ourselves knows what we're truly up to.

For the past year and a bit we've been working on Clutterme. Clutterme was originally intended to be a place where you could save your links (easily) and do a Google Search. Pretty much Google.com but with editable whitespace.

Things got a bit complicated when we started to add friends, picture uploading etc. Clutterme transformed into a way to make a webpage. On October 1st, 2008 we decided to launch Clutterme with around half the features we envisioned.

Believe it or not, a lot of people like, love and use Clutterme. We've maintained a steady flow of traffic over the past couple of months and we've done some minor updates here and there. Clutterme however is almost unchanged from the version we released in October.

So what have we been doing in the meantime? Well in mid October we decided to launch our first Facebook application. Yes, those very same things you (and I) loathe on Facebook. Applications have arguably ruined Facebook. We're complicit in the pillaging.

Our first application was called Fbook President, which has since been renamed to ePresident. The winner of the first official Facebook election on December 31st, 2007 got caught up in the hype and thought he WAS THE ACTUAL PRESIDENT OF FACEBOOK.

I'm not sure if he was being facetious or was just too overly enthusiastic but at some point 'the shit hit the fan'. Arash Darembarsh made radio shows, television appearances and even involved President Sarkozy's office all the while claiming he was the president of Facebook.

This of course is not true and when the hoax was revealed the blowback was even louder (and funnier) than the actual event. Needless to say we had to change our app's name and remove all reference to Facebook within that application.

While this was happening we quietly and not so quietly launched 22 other applications, some of them are beauty applications and others, like our personal favourite I'm With Stupid, are just for fun.

At one point our Facebook apps were pulling in a quarter million pageviews per day. If the traffic was anywhere other than Facebook we could have considered ourselves millionaires. Alas, in mid March the honeymoon ended and our traffic for the most part crashed.

Our apps are still valued at a couple hundred or perhaps tens of thousands of dollars. Here's the list of them for your perusal.

Aside from a few close personal relationships, WE HAD NO LIFE outside of our business during this time. It was horrible. One of the things I've now learned is that it's important to maintain personal friendships and relationships amidst work. You need to play.

In May 2008 we decided to start filing a patent on Clutterme. Making our patent took 4 solid weeks of work and the end result was a 100+ page provisional patent. One very valuable lesson we've learned during this time is that lawyers, given the chance, will screw you. It's up to you not to get screwed.

Aside from tidying up some lose ends on Clutterme and our Facebook apps June presented us with an opportunity for a fresh start. One of the lessons we've learned over the past 12 months is that the best way to make money is to have something to sell (duh).

We're quietly squirreling away, living off the remainder of our Facebook income with two strategic milestones which we hope to launch soon. Milestone #1 will help us get users and milestone #2 will involve getting money from our users.

The saga isn't over yet, this is our final gasp into making Clutterme webpage creator we've always envisioned it becoming.

Look for us also to be moving into our AMAZING OFFICE SPACE at Yonge and Eglinton and start off our 2nd year the the way our business was meant to be started.

To answer your other questions, yes we're making money, but are by no means rich.

Oh, and Facebook is changing the way user profiles appear on Facebook. This should get rid of the crappy application spam that litters user profile pages.

I just finished InHopeOfLove.com

2008-07-04T23:56:00.003-04:00

Inspired by the success of Blackle I thought I'd try launching something similar aimed at our demographic. Hence the first (or maybe not, I haven't looked) female search engine.

Tell your female friends. It's pretty much the same as google but with a nicer picture and more feminine colors.

*Edit*: Early feedback from some Facebook friends is: the domain has got to go, the colors clash and one request to remove the picture of the hot girl on the homepage.

Too much good stuff on the Internet

2008-06-26T20:08:00.001-04:00

Every day I spend about 30-40 minutes reading stuff on my RSS. This is a problem. There is absolutely too much good stuff on the Internet.

Announcing FacebookContest.com

2008-06-10T00:10:00.005-04:00

We just launched Facebook Contest. The idea is pretty simple, we create branded Facebook application contests for businesses.

The motivation is straight-forward. A branded application is a better way to connect with users than just CPM or CPC based marketing and there is no better way for an application to go viral unless it is a contest.

We of course are experts in creating viral Facebook contests so we thought we would turn our experience into a new business - Facebookcontest.com.

If you are interested in having us make a branded Facebook application for you, ping us on our new website, facebook contest contact form.

Patent Lawyers

2008-05-16T01:55:00.003-04:00

ClutterMe is a relatively innovative technology and we decided to file a provisional patent. Choosing a lawyer is a lot like choosing a physician or dentist, it's best to have one you feel comfortable with.

We settled on someone that was in our price range and who had, surprisingly, a good technical background. Anyway, it took us about a month to prepare our provisional patent from first phone call to filing date.

It's been an arduous and tedious process but hopefully in the end it will be worth it.

Now we just have to get back into the mindset of coding.

Mark