Long story: I started really small. I paid around $20/month for a shared hosting when the site is really small (separate app server and db server) and not a lot of contents. my amazon S3 bill is even smaller. Later on when the site outgrows the shared hosting, I used EC2 to get two small isntances (for both app and DB server). Bottom line is the $$ i get from banner is able to pay for the bandwith and hosting. The only extra I pay for is $150 a month for google adwords to drive traffic ($5 a day budget).
Short version: Adwords for $150 a month (I've been paying for this for a year)
I hate the new feature to the core. I don't really care if someone down in new mexico likes what I'm currently reading. Plus, why do they feel like promoting the new feature straight in your face (it's just downright annoying). and to add salt to the wound, i've actually spent a few minutes googling how to disable it (apparently there's no way you can disable it, easily, yet). so I'm actually glad people seem to hate it.
Chrome has become my default browser, second place is Firefox. and i've seen increase in chrome share in my site, up from 3% to 7% for the past 6 months.
There are a lot of boot-strapped web start ups these days, I would suggest go to their "about us" section or blog if they have one and get to know the developers. Also, $300 - 600K is a big range. I would definitely think any YC funded sites should be interested in getting cold hard cash from angel investors
Wow. congrats. unfortunately I'm one of the hundreds that were rejected :)
But the best part for me is I get to meet Adeo in person, and I know I shouldn't be judgemental but he's impressed me as a darn good person that is passionate about helping out start ups as well.
I hope everything goes well with your venture, and please do share your experience with us
Wow, thanks for the response guys. My site is travel oriented website, and that's why you can see IE is getting 50%, and a year ago it was 70 %, so I was shocked as well as ecstatic when it's getting to 50%.
For those of you who has non-developer-geeky-tech website, do you also see IE getting over 50% of browser share?
I'm on twitter too, but I'm not using it for personal blabbing, i used it to promote my site tripntale. I only have 1 friend that is using twitter religiously to broadcast what she's doing everyday, and she's a housewife, albeit a lonely one.
You made a good point, I saw increase in direct acesses but I need to find some ways to know that my effort spent on twitter produces that. Maybe url shortener like bit.ly can help in that regards.
I only recently added the sign up box, and it's because I saw that Facebook was doing it. And I can say that for sites like mine which is not very popular, people need to understand what it is first before they're interested to sign up. And I can see the difference in sign up rate before and after I put the sign up on home page
Hey PedalPete, wow, I really appreciate the effort you're putting in writing the review, I agree with you, I'm not happy with the home page and honestly out of ideas, but what you suggested makes perfect sense.
OKay, i need to go back to the drawing board for the experience. thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it. I'll check out Planeteye now
I started to twitter a few weeks ago, and I was occasionaly posting links to promote my content, but when I check my google analytics, i hardly see any referal from twitter. So at the moment, i'm still unsure about how effective twitter is to my business.