Welcome to the Zoombug Media blog. My name is Rich Buggy. Since I was 10 years old my passion has been developing software applications. I started Zoombug Media a few years ago, under a different name, as a LAMP (Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL) consulting business located in Sydney, Australia. The focus was helping other people build large, scalable applications with the LAMP stack. It was never my primary source of income and when commitments in my day job became too much I put the business on hold.
About six months after putting consulting on hold I discovered the world of Micro ISV’s and became interested in running my own small software company. Reading people like Bob Walsh, Rob Walling, Jason Cohen and many others changed my thinking. Instead of thinking I had to compete with the big boys I suddenly realised two important things:
- You are much more likely to succeed in a niche market that is too small for the big boys
- You can make a good living by having multiple products that you could not make a living from individually
Recently I’ve become the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for online marketing company who operates an ad network and affiliate network. I first heard about online marketing (affiliate marketing) 10 years ago but never paid any attention to it. Working in this new role has opened my eyes to whole new side of the Internet. Suddenly I was learning how to get traffic to web sites and sell products from people who really knew what they were doing.
For many small software companies marketing is the missing link. They’re typically started by developers, like me, who can create awesome products but who do not know how to market them. Without the marketing step you might sell a few copies of your product before you throw in the towel but most people do not sell any. Instead the product becomes abandoned or released as open source in the hope that someone else might use it.
In this blog on plan to focus on the business and marketing side of startups. My hope is that I can bridge the world of the software developer and affiliate marketer so that developers building a startup can turn it into a successful business.