Keep in mind we offer an enticing, but yet to be revealed referral bonus.  So it’s in your best interests to let everyone you know about this opportunity :).

A couple weeks ago, I signed up at V7N’s webmaster forums because one of our users posted about how they really enjoyed our product. “Ok great!”, I thought. I’ll reply and then start a couple other posts about the subject to garner everyone’s feedback and help make it better. I don’t see any problem with doing any of this because everyone else is looking to promote their own product. And even if there was a problem… the administrators could have stepped in and said something, or emailed me privately. They just deleted my account, my posts, and my goodwill for the forum. In fact its a net loss for them because now I’m telling you all how much they suck.

Here’s the friendly message I see when I try to login:

You have been banned for the following reason:
spam

Date the ban will be lifted: Never

How charming!

I left Microsoft on January 4th, to work on emptyspaceads, a company I founded and have been working full time on for the last month… and one that I feel has huge potential. More on that later… but if you’re impatient check out the emptyspaceads blog.

One last thing: if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re broke (like I was in October of 2006 when I started), Microsoft is a pretty great place to be. You can learn new things, build relationships with smart people, and most importantly have time to work on your venture on your own time. I feel start-ups are great, but it’s hard to pursue your own projects while working at one. Microsoft has reached the point in its existence that its employees (in most product groups) don’t work 100 hours/week, freeing you up to pursue your projects.

I wrote the problem off as something I had to deal with. It wasn’t until I went on a long bike ride to Seward Park and back that I figured it out. I remembered a Stanford Entrepreneurial Podcast from a professor who taught entrepreneurial classes there.

So I’ve turned my problem into a learning opportunity. Here is my execution plan:

• Pick key components of the software business that I want to learn about
• Prioritize these areas
• Spend one month on each of these areas (priority order)
• During the month, learn everything I can. Seek out, meet, and learn from gurus in the area. Read articles and books if needed (do I even have time? :p).
• Make the most of this problem… I mean opportunity

• Be ready to work tirelessly to assure the site doesn’t cave under pressure - It takes more effort than you think. Will worked very hard on getting queuing working. Even so, we had thousands of dropped calls. You get *ONE* chance to wow users with your product. If it doesn’t work the first time, they’re not coming back - ever.
• Monitor incoming links - Use software like Google Analytics to monitor incoming links. Know where your traffic is coming from…. by the hour.
• Do damage control early & often - Be prepared to respond on all other blogs and places that mention your product. Thank the reviewer for their time and the readers for reading the story about you. Y ou should be thrilled! Then roll up your sleeves and get ready to handle a bunch of negative comments. Address each one if possible and invite others to come back to your personal/company blog to continue the dialog
• Create many ways of providing feedback - Having a blog to link to, a contact form, and an email address is only a start. Consider having a phone number and a message board. Your web business lives and dies on customer feedback, so keep them happy.
• Create ways for your users to come back - We had no bookmarking feature for our site relying on users to manually bookmark our site. Big mistake. We’ve lost out on thousands of visitors because we didn’t offer these features earlier.
• Ideally have a strategy of monetizing the influx of traffic - the first wave of traffic pretty much caught us unexpected. Before I go telling anyone else about this service I want to have a way we can monetize all the calls we’re making.

*UPDATE*: Uncov Review (the Anti-TechCrunch)