-
How I Earned $34.91 with Referly
Its been two weeks since we launched Referly to the world, and I’m proud to report that I’ve earned $34.91 using the service to share products I own and love. I’ve tried to act like a (somewhat) normal person with Referly and only share things I’m proud to vouch for, either because they already belong to me or because they were suggested to me by a trusted friend.
At this rate, I’ll earn over $900 in a year – so I’m already thinking about what I want to save up for (and maybe I’ll even build a feature for goals like this into the product!). Maybe a weekend in Napa, or a trip back to Seattle to see my parents. Or maybe I’ll do something much less exciting and just pay down my credit card debt… never know.
Refer Products You Own & Love
It was interesting to see that of all the products I referred, the things I actually owned did much better at earning rewards. In fact, I own every item that generated revenue (see below). I think this is because I can speak about these products credibly, and give them the most meaningful and honest recommendations. I pointed out other stuff I found in passing, like a “cute dress for summer!” or “awesome iPhone case” but I wasn’t speaking with the authority of the owner in those cases, and I think people could tell.
Even better is if you have your own pictures of the product (hello Instragram can we do some biz dev?), or a story about how it was useful or enjoyable to you recently – as I did here in my blog post about how to make my favorite drink the Kir Imperial. Tweets and Facebook statuses are more than ads, they’re the shortest advertorials in the world.
Be Helpful, Not Spammy
Don’t bother sharing hundreds of Referly links in hopes that someone somewhere in your social network will click and buy. That’s just not how it works.  In fact, each time you refer something that people don’t want you lose a little bit of credibility with them, and eventually you run the risk of being called out for being spammy. Good referrers focus on finding recommendations for specific people or groups of people that are actually relevant to them, and helping the recipient of the recommendation understand the reasoning behind the suggestion.
Spammy Example
Helpful Example
Referly doesn’t pay on clicks, so even if you have a huge audience you’ll find that if they don’t take any action on the things you say you aren’t going to get rewarded. You’re better off having a tight network of 100 friends, or 1000 adoring fans, instead of 50,000 Twitter followers who would never ask for your advice in real life.
If Something Works, Keep Sharing It
Referly saves all your links, so you can begin to curate a batch of products that you find useful to share in different situations. For me, the books below are usually right at hand when I am talking to other startup people. The kitchen products are all about my resolution this year to drink more water and work “farmer” hours where I wake up between 6am and 7am (more on that in another post). Both topics come up a lot, and people ask me for my suggestions.
In Case You’re Curious – Here are the Products I Shared
Amazon.com: KOR ONE BPA Free Hydration Vessel http://refer.ly/aa0T
Amazon.com: Bodum 5500-01US Ibis Cordless Electric 57-Ounce Water Kettle, Black http://refer.ly/aabY
The Marketing Playbook: Five Battle-Tested Plays for Capturing and Keeping the Lead in Any Market by John Zagula http://refer.ly/13
Voss, Water Artesian Sprkl, 27.1-Fluid Ounce (12 Pack) http://refer.ly/a0fa
Thomas A Edison Benefactor of Mankind by Trevelyan & Miller Francis http://refer.ly/a09m
Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm by Eric G. Flamholtz http://refer.ly/t
Amazon.com: Bodum Pavina 12-Ounce Double Wall Thermo Tumbler Glass http://refer.ly/a00V
That’s what I’ve figured out, there is so much more to do. Happy referring!
-
Saying No
I love saying yes. I love helping people, and being generous with my time whenever I can. I love being a mentor. I love the brain dump, having my brain picked and picking others, coffee, chats, happy hour, walks around SOMA, lunch, drinks, late night drives and all the other social activities that I’ve used over the years to build relationships, dispense advice, and make memories and connections.
I love my friends, our regular spots to eat out, drink, brunch, lunch, gossip, bitch, support each other, and hang out.
I love my family, our regular 4th of July drunkeness around their pool, riding the horses, fireworks on the Indian reservation across the street, driving the truck to the dump and smoking a cigar with Dad, the driving range, the “golden hour” and sitting by the burn barrel appreciating the light, walking around the yard in my PJs clipping flowers for the morning table, handmade Irish soda scones.
Focus
Guess what? I’m not going to be doing any of this for awhile – at least for the summer while Referly is in Y Combinator and probably slowly phasing these things back into my life slowly in the next 6 to 12 months after that ends.
I’m going to be saying no to answering long emails, writing long comments on personal blog posts, taking intros to people who want help with developer marketing and developer evangelism, giving career and startup advice, and hundreds of other things. I’m not going to do inbox zero. If it doesn’t relate directly to the metrics I’m driving for the company, I’m not interested.
We both know its nothing personal. I’ll try not to be terse about it. Thanks for understanding.
We’re moving to a house in Mountain View this week, and the team will be living together and cranking for the next 6 months – I’ll miss you SF but its for the best!
(Yes, I am still advising all the companies on my AngelList profile — I have carved out dedicated time for them each month. If you are on that list, do not fear.)
-
Timeline: Starting Referly Took Me Three Years
On Monday we launched Referly, and announced we will be participating in YCombinator this summer. While this is only my second full-time week as a founder, I thought it would be fun to rummage around in my email and Github to grab a timeline of how Referly went from idea to actual company.
As Kim-Mai Cutler of TechCrunch reported, I haven’t been particularly secretive about the idea. I’ve gone through period of active and passive engagement with this idea since October 2009, and got really serious about just this past February.
————————————
April 2009
Just a few weeks after starting at Twilio I was still working out of Founder’s Fund and coffee shops and living in the Travelodge in the Presidio for $49/night (I hadn’t yet moved to San Francisco from Seattle, and Kevin was still based in Beijing with Microsoft). I met my future Referly cofounder Al Abut for the first time, at the first Startup Weekend in San Francisco. We vowed we would work together someday and stayed in touch.October 2009 – Women 2.0 Startup Weekend SF
In October of 2009 San Francisco hosted Women 2.0 Startup Weekend (read my recap blog post of the event). I was invited to join a panel with Dan Martell, Jessica Livingston, Xochi Birch, and Shanna Tellerman. Quite frankly, I was pretty starstruck – these people had built companies, written books, and launched Y Combinator — what had I done to deserve to sit next to them? But I knew what I had done… I had participated in more Startup Weekend events than anyone there.
As panelists our job was to walk the audience of about 150 people through the process of forming an idea, making plans, and answering some questions from the audience. As we convened to figure out what to pitch I threw out an idea that had stuck in my mind for a month or so – affiliate for everyone. We were down to the wire on time, no one else had another idea (and knowing myself I was probably pretty forcefully determined to my idea: Obsession) so we pitched it. The audience had a few questions, but I’d say the reaction was a collective yawn.
We went on to build something completely different on my team, launching Escape My Date and winning the People’s Choice award (Foodspotting was created won the event!) and even getting a little press. I pushed the idea for Referly to the back of my mind.
February 2010 – Leadscon Conference
Went to support our customers and had heard a little about the lead generation industry from the year before (enough to form an idea of it and the idea for Referly) but my eyes were really opened fully for the first time. I was surprised people weren’t doing something similar to Refer.ly and shocked by how little Social Media was part of the conversation for generating business in this channel. It was surprising that it made me wonder if there way some big barrier to entry that I just didn’t know enough to see.
June 2010 – Registered Refer.ly
I signed up for the refer.ly domain name on Libyan Spider:
And another chat that night with a friend from a previous startup, on the idea. Its amazing how little it has changed, and I’m actually surprised to see how confident I was that this was my future company even then!
February 2011 – Shared First Version with Friends
I got the first version of Referly built and shipped to about 50 friends for feedback. In fact, I just found a screenshot of some bug reports from the lovely Liza Sperling, who has been so supportive! This might be the only image I have of the old site. Edit: And yes I do own fuckyeahitscales.com and used to host a lot of my side projects there.
November 2011 – Meeting Alicia at Skimlinks
At first I thought Skimlinks was going to be a huge competitor (I was bummed for about a week, because they are clearly kicking butt and would have been a formidable competitor), but then I realized what I wanted to build was in the consumer space and that they could be a potential partner instead. Meeting her tipped me off — maybe the time was right for this idea.
February 2012 – Refactoring & Redesigning Referly + Alpha Launch
At first I just wanted to reskin Referly using Twitter Bootstrap, but my PHP skills had evolved a lot since I first wrote the app, and reviewing my previous code I found tons of bugs I couldn’t have spotted before. I decided to completely re-write it and move it from my Dreamhost box to its own instance on EC2.
Once it was working, I got good feedback from friends and decided to start talking about it a bit more and to launch to a bigger audience. We added about 500 people through invites at this point. People told me about Gumroad, Pinterest had drama with Skimlinks, and Facebook announced it would re-launch Beacon. The market seemed right.
March 2012 – Applying to YCombinator
I hadn’t really planned to apply to YCombinator when I started coding in February. I felt like I might not be a fit as a solo founder who already had some funding commitments. As the deadline approached I started to fill out the application – at first just on a whim and then more seriously. The morning of the deadline I woke up early and quickly recorded my application video at a friend’s office. I only had time for 30 minutes of practice, then it was just cut it and send it and head off to work.
I also made a ton of last minute edits to my YC application (which I was never very happy with) and sadly I didn’t save the text or I’d share it as well.
April 2012 – Interviewing with & Getting Into YC
I was very surprised to get the invitation to interview. The process of prepping for interviews and interviewing with YC is a total blur to me now, probably because I didn’t sleep much during that time – doing Twilio by day and Referly by night. Byt the time I interviewed I had two employees on board: Alexandra Harris (who I went to middle school and high school with on Bainbridge Island) and Hudson Kelly (who I met while he was visit Silicon Valley with his college class).I am indebted to many YC founders who agreed to meet with me, and gave their brutally honest feedback on the product and pitch. The more skeptical they were, the better they made me – and I’d often fall asleep feeling raw but wake up feeling like I had grown thicker skin and greater wisdom overnight. I met with one every day between submitting my application and going to my interview. I think Referly developed faster in this period than at any other point.
April 2012 – Wrapping Up at Twilio
I love Twilio, and after spending over 3 years there building the marketing team from the ground up to 18 people, I was very passionate about making a solid transition. We brought in two great hires: Lynda Smith from Jive to head things up as our CMO, and James Parton from Telefonica to take the reins in Europe as Director of Marketing in London.
May 2012 – Launch
On Monday, we launched Referly to the world on TechCrunch, AllThingsD, PandoDaily and Geekwire. Next week, the team will be full time and June 1st we move into our house in Mountain View. So in some ways, this is all brand new, but in other ways it is a continuation of something that has been an obsession of mine for quite awhile. I used to think 3 years was forever, but sometime in the last few I’ve learned a bit of patience.
We now are a team of 5, as Kevin Morrill (my husband) agreed to join as cofounder and CTO and Al agreed to join as cofounder heading up all things design. We’ll be moving into our house in Mountain View the first week of June.
Onward!
