[point]

If you're dumb enough to pay money for this, you're dumb enough that your site will never make any money. The only ones who will get rich from this are the owners of the site - they are selling you a dream, and you are paying for it.

Spend the money on some proper SEO services instead, it will do you more good.

And let me give it to you square - your site will NEVER get funding. It's not hot, it has little potential of becoming huge. It's the type of site that can make solid money, but only by targeting the users directly. When you are making good money, the angels will come to you.

If you are trying to raise funding for your site, you are in the business of dreams, not reality.

[andrewljohnson]

Our site already got funding, thanks. And an fbFund grant.

Of course, we'll need more in 2010, hence my constant quest for more money.

[kwamenum86]

what site?

[andrewljohnson]

www.trailbehind.com

We have a buggy, but much more powerful and fast, update on cabin dot trailbehind dot com (spelled out like this so Google won't index it).

New features include:

* rankings of sites by popularity/popularity-based search

* static caches of maps

* better arrangement of icons on the maps

* updated reporting interface

* expanded data set

We're in bug fix mode right now, and we'll be pushing the update Monday or so.

[patio11]

spelled out like this so Google won't index it

Obscurity will NOT HELP YOU avoiding a Google index. They have many sources of data, including receiving toolbar data from users, and they very pointedly do not mention all sources they use to generate the crawl lists.

If you want to not get indexed, use the nonindex meta tag, or sign up for their webmaster console and remove that particular URL from the index. (Somewhat counterintuitively, robots.txt-ing out a site doesn't prevent it from being indexed, only from being crawled. They will still include it in their search results if it has external indicia of trust.)

[point]

So you have no plan to make money for the entire year of 2009? Are you running a business or a charity?

[andrewljohnson]

We have a plan to make money this year. But then again, so did the last start-up I worked at, and it took us a while longer than a year to post revenues of any kind.

For TrailBehind, we think we can start bringing in revenues this summer (or a large enough audience for institutional funding), but our fallback is to seek additional angel funding. And Plan C is to accept some consulting gigs. We're also going to apply to YC, but that's more for the intangibles than the money.

This month, I brought on our first employee (besides the two founders, who are hackers), to execute our sales and marketing plan. We have multiple paths to revenue that he is charged with exploring, along with seeking out additional funding.

Because our website is devoted to the outdoors, the market is cyclical, and I have determined what that cycle is using Google Analytics. So, we have been developing for a few months, and we'll have a major go-to-market push in the late spring as the hiking season revs up. We're also using the next few months to begin laying seeds with potential partners and additional investors.

[steveplace]

I'd suggest that you keep a more constructive tone on this board.