Most of the FeeFighters are coming along with the acquisition and we are not planning any major changes to our product line.  The FeeFighters marketplace, our Samurai gateway and the FeeFighters and Samurai brands are continuing as before.

Thank you to all of our small business customers for helping us get this far and we look forward to serving you with more innovation over the coming years.

Sean (Co-Founder and CEO of FeeFighters)

While it’s telling that a number of larger online retailers – Target, Shopbop and Zappos, to name a few – have not yet integrated a store application into their active Facebook pages, it may just be a matter of time before adopting f-commerce becomes a necessity. If the rise of mobile commerce is any indication, the growth of f-commerce could be sudden and explosive. Here are a few ways to make the most of your Facebook store.

Think of it as extra marketing for your business instead of a money making extravaganza. Payvment, one of the most prominent Facebook store apps, allows you create and launch your Facebook store for free (premium and platinum versions are also available) and be added to Payvment’s Shopping Mall, a virtual social commerce bazaar of over 100,000 sellers. The upside, of course, is not to have your products floating alongside somebody’s Etsy rejects, but built-in social sharing features such as Like-gating store discounts and front page placement for bestselling items.

Use it to connect with customers and fans (and possibly convert sales). Facebook and other social networking sites offer the unparalleled opportunity to get instant customer feedback on products, especially from users who might not otherwise engage via more traditional routes like emailing customer service or LiveChat. Interaction is easy and casual, and while some comments may be throwaways (“OMG lulz”), you might also get some real insights (“love this dress but wish you would carry larger sizes”). You can openly chat with customers and answer their questions, and an integrated f-store enables them to seamlessly buy items without leaving Facebook. Some customers may even place more trust in the safety of Facebook transactions, no matter how much your store’s shopping cart puts the Secure in SSL.

Get a whole new set of analytics. You may have an entirely different demographic of user who likes to shop your products through social networking sites rather than visit your actual ecommerce store. Creating a separate Facebook store campaign in your Google Analytics account can provide a better understanding of your core social networking users and their shopping habits, allowing you to tailor your f-commerce offerings and possibly even changing the way your main ecommerce site does business.

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+1

If this website is any indication, Liking is still more prevalent than +1’ing, but for businesses with a presence on both Google+ and Facebook the +1 button may yet yield better customer acquisition effects. The most obvious benefit for online businesses is the integration of +1 into Google’s search engine, which essentially serves to bolster your business’ organic search results with virtual word of mouth recommendations.

Of course, the relative success of this hinges on both a) a customer +1’ing your page, store or product and b) someone in that customer’s Google+ Circles searching on a particular keyword or term that pulls up your business in the results. Nonetheless, this kind of targeted result holds more promise than a Like, which can get lost or deleted from a Facebook newsfeed or which may not generate enough interest for a clickthrough. An added bonus for Google+ business users who use Adwords: advertisers can also integrate the +1 button into their display ads.

Posting with Stream

Offering an unTwitter-like lack of a character limit, Google+ Stream allows business users to publish all manners of updates and news in one handy location, whether posting a product photo, pithy offhand comment or extended blog-type entry. While your Stream shouldn’t function as a fountain of oversharing, it could easily become your business’ main hub of information. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could even use Google+ Circles to segment your customer and vendor lists and control who gets which marketing message.

“Hangout” With Customers

Get out of the Slanket and put on the tuxedo t-shirt – Google+ Hangouts allows businesses to live video chat with customers and other users in their Circles via their Google+ page. Not only does this give your business an opportunity to personalize the online shopping experience, but it could prove helpful for customer service issues that require a visual explanation (like what am I supposed to wear these with?). Online businesses are already getting creative with Hangouts and using them to host virtual events, make announcements and broadcast podcasts and informational sessions.

Tracking the Ripples

Google+ has everything that you’ve come to expect from the privacy eschewing Analytics overlords, with much more in the works. Social reports on Analytics provide tangible figures on your site’s +1’s, and Ripples gives you a visual representation of how and through whom your Google+ posts spread. Features currently being rolled out include information about Google+ business page interactions, user demographics and user social activity.

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So what has the potential to be the next online or mobile product sharing craze? Here are the contenders.

Svpply – Svpply is true social sharing, linking users through their Facebook and Twitter accounts. In addition to following the finds of favorite friends and businesses, visitors can also bookmark their own wishlist items from over 7,000 online retail sites.
Coolest feature: Unlike other social sharing sites that allow users to post non-retail links to items, Svpply eliminates the pesky inconvenience of coveting something un-buyable. A mouseover on any product on Svpply pulls up an informational bar with quick item details, including a direct link to buy.

Curisma – Tech product sharing site Curisma helps you channel your inner Kanye West, which is to say, someone with infinite resources, better taste and probably more insufferable than you. Curismatic users earn points and are ranked by the breadth and popularity of their product finds.
Coolest feature: Visitors to Curisma will find tons of must-have items that suddenly seem necessary to life itself – even if their actual function is not entirely clear.

Snapette – A location-driven iPhone app, Snapette is one part Instagram mixed with two parts Foursquare, and a little splash of Tumblr thrown in for good measure. Fashionably inclined users (or “Snapettes”) employ their mobile phones to take shots of favorite shopping finds and upload them for other Snapettes to discover.
Coolest feature: Snapette helps users easily track down where to find favorite brick-and-mortar items with Google Maps markers.

Mistash – Mistash is a “social product catalog,” or as I like to call it, “Pinterest for dudes.” Users “stash” shared photos instead of “pinning” them, and any questions about the target audience should be cleared up by the old timey mustache logo.
Coolest feature: In addition to bookmarking wishlist items and recently purchased products, users can share favorite products that they used to own, leading to some fun to read nostalgia posts.

Mlkshk –Functionality-wise Mlkshk could be considered the most similar to Pinterest out of the bunch, but with far less pearl clutching (remember when this image scandalized the Pinterest sweater set?). Shared images and videos tend to run more along the lines of the next hilarious internet meme instead of shabby chic cupcake wedding inspiration.
Coolest feature: An optional NSFW filter keeps the mood light and avoids viewing any potentially embarrassing product finds in the non-privacy of your cubicle.

What’s your pick for the next great social sharing or bookmarking site?

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Mixergy

If you want the ultimate guide to entrepreneurship, Mixergy is the site for you. Mixergy founder Andrew Warner, a very successful entrepreneur himself, has interviewed over 600 successful entrepreneurs who posted over 45 entrepreneurship courses on Mixergy, which you can access for free or for a small monthly fee. Make sure to check out the Mixergy  “PR on a Budget” course from FeeFighters very own Stella Fayman.

AVC

NYC Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures is one of very few VCs who actually blogs. His blog, A VC, offers thoughts on everything from women entrepreneurs to interesting products at conferences to how his own wife and daughter use technology to management advice for entrepreneurs and much more.

StartupLessonsLearned

The Lean Startup Movement pioneer Eric Ries writes about some great startup lessons he and other entrepreneurs learned on his blog, StartupLessonsLearned. Eric Ries is a big believer in testing your idea with the least possible work, and then improving your product based on data you get from your customers or pivoting quickly if your minimum viable product is not a success. If you’re interested in learning more about this type of more efficient and data-driven product testing for startups, make sure to also check out Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup.

Paul Graham

Paul Graham is one of the top influencers in Silicon Valley due to the popularity of his top startup incubator, Y Combinator, which invests a small amount of money into many startups who are mentored by top entrepreneurs and investors for 3 months while developing their startup and preparing it for VC funding. Paul Graham is a successful entrepreneur himself – he sold a company for millions of dollars in the 90s – and his experience with funding and mentoring over 380 top-notch startups over the years makes his essays a must-read for every startup founder. Also make sure to follow Hacker News, a very popular Y Combinator news aggregator for hackers.

Signal VS Noise

Chicago-based 37Signals, the succeful company behind the Signal VS Noise blog, always offers interesting and unique perspectives about business optimization in every area from user experience design to email marketing to productivity to deciding which features to include in the next iteration of your product. That’s right, I called it a business because unlike many Silicon Valley startups, 37Signals has always been about building useful products which they can charge money for. Take a look at their blog, and if you like their philosophy, I highly recommend reading their book Rework.

What is your favorite startup blog?

This is a guest post from Natasha Murashev, a former FBI agent turned Googler who is now learning Ruby on Rails and working on her own startup.

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According to Paul Graham, startup density is what saves startups in places like Silicon Valley, as it provides:

1. An environment that encourages startups
2. Chance meetings with helpful people
3. A social norm of optimism

Now, the idea that high startup density (a large number of startups relative to your city size), increases your startups’ chances of success isn’t groundbreaking.  In fact, the absolute belief in high startup density (HSD) is the reason why a lot of people leave places like Detroit and Cleveland to go to Chicago or San Francisco.  HSD is also the same reason why Brad Feld argues that Boulder is such a vibrant entrepreneurial community. The issue is though, that recent data suggests that living in a city with a higher startup density does not necessarily guarantee a higher rate of startup success.”

In order to test out the startup density idea, we used a cool website called Startup Data Trends, made by Bocoup and Atlas Ventures.  Startup Data Trends allows you to browse startups from the site AngelList and learn more about different cities, market segments, average valuations and amounts raised- like a Yahoo Finance for startups.  Using Startup Data Trends we can take a data driven look at the idea that startup hubs are the best place to be.  (Hint, the data seems to say they aren’t).

In the series of graphs below, we compare the success of startup hubs by using two metrics, as well as compare the startup density using two different measurements.  For the success of startup hubs, we used the average valuation and average money raised per startup by city.  While, to compare the size of the startup hubs, we used two different measurements: startup density, the number of startups per 100K residents, and the number of total startups per city. We chose the cities that had at least 150 data points for valuations, so places like Boulder didn’t quite qualify (sorry Brad).  Now, if Graham and Feld were right and HSD does lead to better startup success, the average valuation and average amount raised would decrease as the startup density goes from higher to lower.   However, you don’t see this trend- the success values consistently go up and down, and in no particular order.

Success of Startup Hubs by Startup Density
The following graphs show the success of different startup hubs in terms of average valuation and amount raised by startups, measured against the startup density (startups per 100K residents).
The far left of this graph is not surprising at all, as Silicon Valley has twice the startup density of it’s nearest competitor, Boston.  What is relatively surprising though, is how New York City and Chicago rank near the bottom in terms of density.  However, it seems many great new startups are coming out of these cities (Tumblr and GroupMe in NYC, Groupon and Grubhub in Chicago to name a few), while the startup density of Chicago and New York City is really decreased by the fact that these are huge cities with other stuff going on.
This is where the data really gets interesting, as the graph doesn’t show the expected answer of higher startup density leading to higher valuation, especially when you don’t count Silicon Valley.  Since the cities are ranked from highest startup density to smallest, you might expect the highest valuation on the left and the lowest on the right, however, this is not what you see.  For example, Boston and Atlanta have very high startup density, but have relatively lower valuations, while New York City has a relatively high valuation, but a low startup density.

Startup Hub success by Number of Startups in Each City
The following graphs show the success of different startup hubs in terms of average valuation and amount raised by startups, measured against the number of startups per city.

Just to make sure that our measurement of startup density isn’t to blame for the inconclusive evidence, we took a look at the number of startups per city.  The top five is as expected though it’s a bit interesting that Boston, a much smaller city, has more startups than Chicago, but I guess that is what happens when you get a high density of top research institutions.

In this last chart you can see the cities in order of most startups to least, and the measurements of success on the two y axises, average valuation and average amount raised.  Even when we change the measure of the startup hub from startup density to straight number of startups, you still don’t see the left to right downward slope that Brad Feld and Paul Graham might expect you to see. In fact, the data seems to be very inconsistent and it doesn’t seem to show that having more startups in a city leads to more startup success.

Overall, I agree that having more entrepreneurs around you is awesome, since entrepreneurs are generally fun, intelligent, encouraging people.  However, if you take away the fun of an environment of entrepreneurs, the data doesn’t seem to support the idea that higher startup density actually leads to more startup success.  So before you pack up your bags and join the flock down the yellow brick road to Silicon Valley, take a minute to consider whether or not you actually need to surround yourself with other startups, because the data seems to suggest your startup success doesn’t necessarily depend on your proximity to other like-minded individuals.

Full dataset in google docs

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It may seem like every single great domain in the world is taken (I mean, how do you describe some of these new startups with ridiculously misspelled or completely made up words as their brand name?), but that is a big misconception. There are plenty of great domains left, just waiting for you to register them. Here is how you find them…

Choosing Words

The first part of your domain searching journey should include plain brainstorming. Think of words that describe your product and write these down. These words should be specific enough so people know what your product is about, but also general enough so as your business expands (or if you do a slight pivot) and you start offering new, but related products, your domain name will still work.

‘FeeFighters’ is a great example of a brand name that is both specific and general at the same time. When you come to FeeFighters, you know it is specifically about saving money, but the name is flexible enough where FeeFighters can offer multiple products to help you save money (which they do).
Domize

If you have some domain names already in mind, check out domize. Domize is a really quick way to search for available .com, .org, .net, .biz, and .us domains. It has a very clean user interface, and is a lot more fun to work with than most of the domain registrars out there.

LeanDomainSearch

If you’ve come up with a few words that work well with your product, but need a little bit more help combining words to come up with a good domain, make sure to check out LeanDomainSearch.com. LeanDomainSearch is a new tool that finds available .com domains with specific key words. It is actually pretty addicting if you’re as obsessed with looking for domains as I am. You’ll be surprised by how many cool .com domains are still available.

.CO Domains

If you can’t find the right .com domain for your product, make sure to check out .co domains, which have recently become widely available for purchase. Big Brands such as Twitter (t.co), Overstock.com (o.co), Google (g.co), 500 Startups (500.co), Angel List (angel.co), and many more are already using .co domains.

Web 2.0 Domains

If all else fails, there are always plenty of Web 2.0 domains. Check out Web 2.0 domain generator tools like Dot-o-mator. The only issue with these type of domains is that they’re hard for your users to spell and remember.

You can also check out availability for non .com domains, with endings such as .ly (Lybian) or .am (this is what Instragr.am uses) – you can get pretty creative with these. However, the non .com endings might cost you a lot more and are subjects to the rules and regulations of a different country.

Feel free to share any other domain searching tools that you like and use in the comments!

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1) Daily Deals- You knew this was coming. Once hailed the next Big Thing, more daily deal sites are folding recently than unused Groupons in your deal wallet. In fact, almost 800 daily deals closed down in the last 6 months of 2011 in the US. Ouch. If you’re in Asia, it’s even worse. More than 1,400 daily deal sites vanished in the same time period. The truth is, people just don’t care anymore…they are suffering from “deal fatigue” after buying hordes of daily deals which they creatively try to spend over time. If the big guys like Amazon and Google can’t make people care…you likely won’t be able to either.

2) Virtual Currency- BitCoin caused quite a stir in 2011. So much of a stir that soon the equivalent rate for 1 BitCoin became equivalent to almost $30 (bubble anyone?). The problem was that there was no certainty that governments wouldn’t outlaw bitcoins, nor do they avoid the simple laws of economics that govern supply and demand. To learn more about the rise (and fall) of bitcoin, click here. Let’s just say it’s safe to assume that starting a P2P currency is not a good move for 2012.

3) Mobile, Social Local Photo Sharing App- Need I say more? In 2011, there was an explosion of photo sharing apps, none so infamous as Color and well, we know how that turned out. With so many widely used alternatives…Instagram, Path, Hipstamatic, to name a few…Color did not give users a reason to switch.  Not even with $45 million in their pockets. Mobile, social local photo sharing apps have been done! There I said it…don’t go there.

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Imagine making a number of important purchasing decisions on your small business’s credit card with your current interest rate in mind, only to receive a notice from your credit card company shortly thereafter, informing you that your rate had been doubled for no reason. Seems like a money-wasting nightmare, but it’s actually the case for why small business owners must garner debt stability in the new business credit card environment.

Somewhere around 80% of small businesses use credit cards for funding purposes, according to a National Small Business Association survey, and while debt stability has been historically unattainable, a credit card law put into effect in February 2010 (the CARD Act) made it possible for those using personal credit cards. The law prohibits credit card companies from changing a cardholder’s interest rate for existing debt unless he is 60 or more days delinquent on payment.

Ok, but why should small business owners care if personal credit card users are the only ones who benefit from the legislation? For one simple reason: According to a Card Hub Business Credit Card Study all of the major credit card issuers consider small business owners to be personally liable for business
credit card use and send information about this use to their personal credit reports, which means it affects their personal credit scores. In other words, there’s no reason not to use a personal credit card for company spending.

However, there are indeed reasons to continue using business credit cards: enhanced expense tracking capabilities, the ability to set custom credit limits for employee cards, centralized company rewards earning, and more. So where does that leave you? Using a rewards business credit card for everyday expenses that are paid for in full within a single billing period and a personal 0% credit card for expenses that result in a revolving monthly balance.

Aside from garnering debt stability as well as a business credit card’s unique features, there are a number of reasons why a credit card strategy like the one laid out above is beneficial. First of all, it gets you the best possible overall credit card terms. There’s no one credit card that provides both the best rewards and the lowest rates, but those things are certainly attainable if you use two different cards. Secondly, it prevents you from losing money on interest as a result of not having a grace period for new purchases. While interest isn’t normally assessed on a credit card until after your payment is due, when
you’re revolving a balance, new purchases begin accruing interest immediately.

Ultimately, small business owners have to realize that things have changed since the CARD Act and that old myths, such as the belief that personal credit cards increase personal liability, must be overcome. There are simply too many up-and-coming companies out there today and times are too tough to let
yourself be held back by the lobbying efforts of credit card companies, which have thus far resulted in Congress only protecting consumers and not small business owners.

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If you’re working in a startup, chances are the only project managements tool you have around is your whiteboard. The whiteboard is great for brainstorming ideas, but as your company continues to grow and you bring on more and more people, you might want to upgrade to a more formal web-based project managment tool.

At first, project management tools may sound intimidating, especially if you’ve ever worked in a corporation that has official project managers who are trained to use the insanely feature-rich Microsoft Projects, but luckily, there are more than a few tools out there that are much cheaper and easier to use.

Here is a list of 5 project management tools that will help you organize your team and substantially increase your team’s productivity.
1) Asana

Asana was started by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz whose vision is to fix how people collaborate on projects and work in teams. Asana is incredibly simple and intuitive to use and has a really nice three-window interface, so you can see your projects, tasks, and individual task details all on the same page. The best part about Asana is that it’s free for a group of up to 30 people, so you won’t have to break the bank to use this high-quality product.

2) Basecamp

Basecamp was started by the 37signals, a group of developers and designers who build their own simple feature-free project management tool after not being satisfied with the available options out there for their agency. They’ve decided to release Basecamp to the public, and it was an instant success (37signals is no longer an agency as they make more than enough money from their tools to support themselves). The key-word in there is “feature free” project management tool. If you’re looking for something that has a lot of specific features, Basecamp is not for you. 37signals is notorious for not listening to their customers when it comes to adding features. They like keeping their product as minimalist as possible and easy to use. Basecamp pricing ranges from free to $149/month based on the number of projects, and storage your team needs.

3) Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects has all the features you’ll ever need, including bug tracking, wikis, chat, document collaboration, time tracking, and a lot more. However, one of the things I personally like about Zoho Projects is that they make it really easy to hide these features if you don’t need them. For example, if you have a marketing project, you can get rid of the bug-tracking and wiki tab. So if your company is just starting out, but you plan to grow a lot in the future, Zoho Projects is a great tool to use, since you can hide the features you don’t need at first, and grow into them in the future versus Basecamp, which is great to use in the beginning, but you’re likely to outgrow it in the future. Zoho Projects pricing ranges from $20/month to much higher depending on which features and add-ons your team needs.

4) Pivotal Tracker

Pivotal Tracker is a project management tool created by development agency Pivotal Labs, who needed a custom tool for their agile software development technique. If you have more than a few developers at your startup and already practice agile software development, Pivotal Tracker might make your life a lot easier. Pivotal Tracker pricing starts at $7/month and goes up to $50/month based on the number of users, projects, and storage your team needs.

5) Unfuddle

Unfuddle combines the simple project management features of Basecamp with the very technical Git and Subversion hosting. If you have several developers working on the same project, git helps you keep track of the changes each developer makes and merge these changes into the main project while having a backup of the last version of code. Unfuddle pricing ranges from free to $99/month depending on how many users, projects, and storage your team needs.

As you can see, we are lucky enough to be living in an age where there are project management tools available for your team’s specific needs for both features and pricing. Only a few years ago, the only available option out there was Microsoft Projects. The above five are tools that I have used or heard good things about from other startups, but there are countless others, so let me know if you need help deciding on the right tool for your team.

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