1.) Goto:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.corkd.com

2.) Then compare it to http://www.winelog.net (just below the traffic graph

NOTE: I know Alexa.com is far from being THE source for online traffic data but it’s a good reference point. Plus whether you think its metrics are right or wrong it always does it the same each time so you can compare one site against another and know it’s a relative picture of their performance.

In both cases you’ll notice a large (in relative terms) spike as they launch the sites.

In fact you’ll notice WineLog’s initial spike is larger than Corkd’s spike.

However, in both cases you notice that the traffic patterns spiral downward.

The KEY is the “real” visitors and the ability to provide something of value they want to return for – or something they want to post on their site that gives you credit for traffic.

I agree that correct SEO practices would Definitely benefit the long-term value of any site.

But in this era of IPO or sellouts… do you believe that SEO truly is more valuable in the long run that having a million dollar VC bankroll to fund your marketing machine?

By the way – Great Post – thanks for your insights!

Scott M. Britner
$10,000 Dad on a $250,000 Mission
(email me if you’d like to know more)

WineLog is being developed by two people (disclaimer: close friends of mine) who are both working day jobs, and wanted to get a body of functionality complete and out the door. Sure there are issues with the site, but you know what, they were also the second to market by a matter of days.

They will eventually work through their issues and have a great site, but in the mean time they’re getting lots of early-to-market benefits such as inbound links. Titles can be updated, but inbounds and hoards of traffic are money in the bank.

On the other hand if the obvious functionality is given, well then people might buy it (I did not say Apple or Windows or Unix (or Drupal or WordPress), did I?). I just don’t understand why being geeky always means to give away support for free …

BTW, that copyright thing sounds too funny but I am sure it’s true … somebody has to try it

For me, I just pop down to my local Sainsburys and pick up the quality wines that have been reduced by 50% – I can’t be arsed discussing them on a website, that’s all too fancy for me. That said, the Cork’d site looks better than winelog and the urls are better from a Search perspective. They seem to on the money there and with the individuals behind it, it should fare better I guess. It’s often more about presentation these days rather than anything else (it seems that way to me at least)

I’m tempted to sign up and add some fine wines such as Mad Dog 20/20 and Night Train etc.

ROTFLMFAO….

Meaning, making functionality and features understandable and usable should be the key task, NOT educating the masses to geek trends and fads

As redeye says:

As I evaluate new startups these days I’m finding it harder and harder to see the big ideas that will appeal to a large, non-geek consumer audience. Thoughts?

I think this is definitely the point. Beside that you need for sure to be on the save side with all the ‘easy’ details you’ve listed above. To try it the ‘bad’ way and to promise a ‘clean’ update for later is pretty silly.

One addition about getting real people to easy to understand landing pages: In my long thread about the sense of ‘tag clouds’ Intuitive Navigation with Tag Clouds I have mentioned somewhere at the end that by now every article on my new site gets ‘tags/keywords’ and every tag is a clean URL leading to a local tag search result page. Now 25 days later I can say that Google is loving the tag result pages and many people (30% to 40%) get a nearly 100% relevant tag search result page as a landing page on my site which gives them an immediate overview about where they are and where they are able to go from that page.

The first time readers from the search engines get on my tag search result pages:

1. A first paragraph telling them in two short sentences what they see. This morning I have added additional links to a fulltext search with the same tag/keyword and links to the archive and the bookmark page (these links were in the header navigation before but now they are directly available while skimming the first paragraph).
2. The excerpts listed by date for all found articles for that tag/keyword. Every excerpt has a very graphic link telling people ‘to click here to read the whole article’. Many friends seeing my page the first time told me that this link must be big and intuitive!
3. A tag cloud with all the available tags/keywords
4. I am still thinking about highlightening the searchwords if it’s a SE referrer. This might eat up some performance.

People coming to these landing pages stay longer and read more pages (on my site)! Oh, and that result was realized with standard software plus one additional plug-in … hardly any know how necessary!

Better than relying purely on the web2.0 tech crowd who ALSO happen to be [insert real target here] anyway.

Web2.0 businesses must break out into the larger, more mainstream audiences. Preaching to the choir is all good fun and that, but it’s not going to make a great business if you’re doing something like wine…

I

We’re doing everything from a full blown front end ot the upcoming ad network, to simple content modules to make this place more fun and useful — Drupal is a very versatile platform from which to build “web2.0 apps”.

Thanks for the mention here greggles..

As I read your story I kept thinking “when is he going to answer the third question?!?!?!”

I knew the answer, but when you did answer it you pointed out all of the stuff that a Drupal fanatic would have pointed out…it’s shame when good people use weaker tools to get their job done

Drupal can really do all that? I’ve never used it, is it hard to install or set up?

I guess I’m a bit slow at times too – I didn’t realize the real advantage of having keywords in the url:

…’its becuase poeple paste whole urls on message boards and blogs that get turned into live links’

I don’t set up blogs with the post title in the url because I always just thought it made the url too long and messy.