Get your startup company listed fast on KillerStartups.com

Written on 27th January 2009                                                                                                              21 COMMENTS
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr

Many have heard about KillerStartups.com, a place where startup companies are reviewed and listed.

According to Compete.com (which measures only US traffic) they had almost 600,000 unique visitors last month. If you double that you kinda have an idea of how much traffic receives overall.  Alexa ranks the website on 8,599 position in the world (2,784 in USA). Not to mention there are over 13,000 RSS subscribers.

So, it’s a pretty well established website.

Now, the question is: How to get listed there? And fast?

Ernst (the former, now, editor-in-chief of TheNextWeb) was excited about the avalache of the new Swedish startups which made it to the web recently and wondered when KillerStartups will pick them up and review them on its website.

Well, Ernst, here’s how you can do it :) (you can also let those new startups know how they can do it by showing them this post).

I am showing my experience here. Others may have different experience (better or worst).

Yes, they have a form which you can fill in and submit. Chances are that they won’t react immediately or at all to that (that was my case).

So, I looked from where they get their news or tips, their source of information.
If you look in the image below you will see the “Source” of the news. Among other sources there is Techcrunch, Readwriteweb, Mashable, Webware. I’m not focusing on these because it’s quite hard to attract their attention (I’m sure they are pounded with many daily requests so they won’t publish them all). I’m talking about the other sources, less obvious.

In my case it was Launchfeed.com (although I don’t have a startup but a blog).
I listed my blog there and voila! In 2 days (if I remember well) Killerstartups picked it up.

But there are other sources there where you can get your startup listed quite easily and thus getting KillerStartups attention right away.

Those sources are presented below.

1) Launchfeed (www.launchfeed.com)
Go to “Submit,” then fill out the form in order to announce your launch. You need to have an English-language site, otherwise they won’t approve your submission.  I used Launchfeed to announce my site (although my site is older than 1 month) and Killerstartups.com picked it up in the next two days.

2) SimpleSpark (www.simplespark.com)
Simple Spark is the place to find and share a new world of web applications. Your website/service/application can be listed here, too. Click on “Add Apps to Spark,” then open an account.

3) Listio (www.listio.com)
Listio is a user-driven directory that allows you to submit any web 2.0 application for others to discover, rank and comment on. When you submit a new application, it will be placed in a “pending” area until an editor reviews and publishes it. Looks like a Digg for web applications. Click on “Submit a web 2.0 app link” to create an account.

4) Go2web20 (www.go2web20.net)
This is a Flash directory of Web 2.0 applications. You can send them an email by clicking on “Suggest.”

5) Lo-Fi librarian (www.lo-fi-librarian.co.uk)
This is a blog created by a Master Degree student in Library and Information Studies from UK. You can contact him/her by email and try to have your website listed on his/her site.

6) FeedMyApp (www.feedmyapp.com)
This is another web applications listing site but without a voting system. Click on “Suggest a Site” link and fill out the form (no account needs to be created).

7) Emily Chang eHub (www.emilychang.com/go/ehub)
eHub is a personal initiative of Emily Chang (a well know web designer) where she lists web startups. You can submit a site, service, or news on her “Submit a Site” page.

8) MOMB (http://momb.socio-kybernetics.net)
The MoMB (Museum of Modern Betas) is a site dedicated to listing web-based applications on a beta trip. This site is in an alpha version, but you can contact them by email (see About).

9) SociableBlog (www.sociableblog.com)
SociableBlog is a social networking and social media blog which offers the latest news, articles, and video on social networking, social media, social community, and social software worldwide. You can let them know about your service/website by clicking on the “Submit News” link (but you have to register first to use this form).

10) DemoGirl (www.demogirl.com)
Molly McDonald is the editor-in-chief of this blog (which belongs to VPOP Technologies INC www.vpop.net ). If she thinks your service is good enough, she will build a screencast of it and feature it free of charge on her DemoGirl website. You can drop her a note (see “About DG”).

11) Rev2 (www.rev2.org)
Rev2.org is a weblog dedicated to profiling new Web 2.0 startups and technologies, as well as providing in-depth analysis on the state of this industry. Send an email with your announcement to one of the editors (see the About page).

12) WebDev 2.0 (www.webdevtwopointzero.com)
They present a variety of sites which they think are useful for their readers. Go to “Submit a site” to submit your site to them for review.

13) Dzine blog (www.dzineblog.com)
Dzine blog is all about designs. Here you will find inspirational designs and some good tips in logo, graphics and web designing. Contact the owner (Contact page) and tell him about your website (especially if you have a great looking website).

14) Ziipa (www.ziipa.com)
Ziipa is a visual search engine which accepts website submissions. Just go to “Suggest” and fill out the form. They will review your submission and approve/reject it.

Note: I have chosen only those that accept English-language sites, but there are many others (Spanish, German).

After being listed in KillerStartups I had a spike in number of visitors during 2-3 days. Another advantage is that your URL may get bookmarked on social media websites like Delicious and others like that which can also drive traffic to your website.

Let us know if you have the same success getting listed on KillerStartups!

And if you want startups to know about this then bookmark and share this article.

companies, feed, killerstartups, listing, startup, web

21 Comments »

BuyUCoffee.com: prostitution 2.0 or a good business idea?

Written on 2nd May 2008                                                                                                              2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Being a true start-up blogger, I’ve subscribed to the KillerStartUps RSS feed. This means scrolling through at least 30 new start-ups a day of which most are hopeless. Yet sometimes this feed is great source of inspiration. This morning I stumbled upon BuyUCoffee.com, a dating community where users get paid to go on a date.

After setting up a gold account of 140 dollars, you can upload a picture, participate in forum discussions, write blog postings, but most importantly of all: you can set a price that you will charge others to go on a date for you. According to the founders, it’s “the most revolutionary and most efficient dating service in the world. (..) You set your price, then the potential matches pay you to meet for coffee. Do not waste your precious time on other sites.”

Well, revolutionary or not, I tend to agree with Thomas from KillerStartUps, he notes:

The word “prostitution” comes instantly to mind when thinking about being paid for a “date”.

Call me conservative, but for me it would be one embarrassing start of a love affair when you know one of the parties has paid for the first date.

However, this service might be perfect for business purposes, like NotchUp has already proved.

NotchUp allows you to set up a price that you will charge headhunters to talk business with you. Co-founder Rob Ellis told me that “the way people look for new jobs and companies hire is broken, and we’d love to help fix it”. The service managed to attract 100,000 users in the first month and still seems to go strong.

Coffee break during The Next Web conference

So how can we translate this “pay and I’ll show up” model to another way of doing business? We could use it for networking purposes. In the tech world, there are some tech influentials that EVERYBODY wants to meet. Think of Scoble, Arrington, Calacanis, and Rubel, who wouldn’t want to have coffee with them? And although I’m sure they’d love to meet interesting people, their schedules probably won’t allow it.

So how about organizing a coffee meeting – featuring a web influential – for which you can buy a ticket? Then you have the time to interview him, pitch your start-up, discuss the future of the web or just have a chat.

Though I’m not entirely sure the bad taste of “you have to pay me” will disappear. After all the ideals of our industry lead to a different coffee experience. Open Coffee, anyone?

buyucoffee, influentials, killerstartups, open coffee, prostitution 2.0

2 Comments »