Paras Chopra, founder of Wingify (VWO), writes about finding startup ideas, making money from web apps, and building startup teams.
HN commenters link his posts on why web apps fail to make money and on finding startup ideas, and his guest-blogging marketing approach.
Main methodology was guest blogging. I contributed exhaustive articles in publications such as Smashing Magazine, CopyBlogger, etc. The articles were purely educational in nature, taught people what A/B testing was and VWO was introduced as one of the of the new tools to do A/B testing easily.
The second big focus was on passion for feedback from early customers and incorporating that into the product. Really, our product is driven mostly by customer feedback and that is why our customers love talking about it.
I plan to write comprehensively about it. But I do keep posting my experiences on my blog http://paraschopra.com/blog/
Paras's (founder of Wingify) blog posts on
Sorry your cool web app is probably not going to make money
http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-going-to-make-money.htm
How to find startup ideas that make money
http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-find-startup-ideas-that-make-money.htm
might be appropriate given his stunning success (congrats Paras)
The other great thing about Wingify is that they aimed from the beginning at a global product vs a 'localized' knock off of an existing American product.
Good read, thanks. Here's similar :
http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/using-adwords-to-assess-demand-for-your.html
http://blog.stevebarsh.com/barsh_bits/2009/01/5-surprising-ways-to-derisk-your-new-idea-using-google-adwords-part-1-of-2.html
http://blog.stevebarsh.com/barsh_bits/2009/01/5-surprising-ways-to-derisk-your-new-idea-using-google-adwords-part-2-of-2.html
http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-do-research-on-a-new-ideatarget-industry-using-twitter.htm
You must talk to Paras Chopra of Visual Website Optimizer. He once built a platform for indie musicians (http://kroomsa.com) and he's based in Delhi too. From what I remember, it didn't really work out for him. He's written about it on his blog - http://paraschopra.com/blog. I'm sure he will have some valuable experiences to share.
The link for "Sorry your cool web app is probably not going to make money" is:
http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-going-to-make-money.htm
From the links at the bottom of the OP, it would appear so: http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/how-making-money-changed-my-perspective-on-startup-ideas.htm