This post recently got featured on siliconrus.ru, and boy did the Russians hate it! As usual, my critique of VK seemed to upset them and the verbal abuse wave has begun!
Ever since I arrived in Moscow I have always wanted to launch some kind of website, I'm not sure why,
but the idea always held huge appeal. The problem is, I could never find one
that felt right for me (not counting England-Moscow of course).
Finally that changed when I when I got started on a new project. It's taken almost a year of
preparation, endless e-mails, bug testing and content generation, but I launched Zdrav Sila last week. It’s a
supplement cost comparison tool with an article base that gets updated every
week.
Here are some things I picked up and recommendations along the way for anyone else
interesting in getting something online in Russia.
01 Find the right programmer/developer
Everything hinges on this
and it’s probably the most important step.
While I can make a website
using different CMSs and I know some html and CSS, I knew that I’d need someone
to get this thing done right. Not only did I want something that looked decent
but the comparison tool would need a lot of special coding.
In theory it’s simple, but
in practice, this tool has been a royal pain in the ass and it’s still being
tweaked on a weekly basis.
So, on to the programmer.
The first lesson you learn in Russia is to always
ask for recommendations.
If you need a doctor, a
urologist (especially a urologist!) or dentist, make sure the first thing you
do is ask you Russian friends to recommend.
Way too many scammers and unscrupulous workers out
there, way too much potential for disaster.
In my case, I talked to
the person who did an e-commerce website for my GF’s mum and she put me in
touch with someone that she said I could trust and who had the necessary technical
chops.
Books like The 4-Hour Workweek
(great read btw), recommend using Indian programmers to keep costs down,
but I didn't feel comfortable with it this time around, although I will be
using an Indian programmer for an app I'm planning.
Trust that the person can do the job is key.
I knew a very switched-on Russian businesswoman who’s
first online venture (a kids clothing store) failed miserably because she chose
the wrong programmer.
She went for some low cost
student type to save rouble, but the site took so long and there were so many bugs
that she just couldn't get her business started. Plus, she had quit her high
paying banking job and was missing out on around 10 thousand dollars a month in
salary. Ouch!
But it didn't have to be that way. E
commerce sites are not hard, really.
She ran out of money ended up working as a prostitute on Kursky train station, leasing her body out in exchange for Rolton noodles...
Just kidding, but she did have to sell the
site before it even did a dollar of business. Now think of all that lost income in
salary because some programmer couldn't get his shit together.
Keep in mind, It’s not like the West
were you can just Google what you need and expect normal, trustworthy results.
Here’s a good example: I found
a guy to do a logo on Google and what he designed was perhaps the shittiest thing I've ever seen in my life. I actually keep the drafts because they’re hilarious. I sometimes just look at them to boost my mood.
The apple one is particularity fantastic
So, I’ll reiterate, make
sure you get someone who can do the job and do it on time! Which brings me to
the next point.
02 Plan your time
Frankly I don’t even know
how my project has ended up taking so long, but I don’t have anything at stake
and still have my day job.
However long you think it
will take, it will probably take longer - keep this in mind and don’t rush into
quitting your job or anything.
At one point, nothing much
was happening for a good few months because I wasn't pushing the issue, but
then of course, I had to step things up.
03 Be persistent with your programmer
I got things back on track
once I started calling him every Monday for progress reports. He had to admit
that he had delegated some stuff out and it just wasn't getting done. Now, I was
putting pressure on him, and he was then reapplying that pressure elsewhere.
You don’t need to be a
pushy dick or anything, a couple of calls a week is enough. He knew that a call
was coming and he’d have to justify himself again if the job wasn't done, which
made him step up his game.
After that, we got the
breakthrough that we needed and that should have come earlier and work was back
to 100%.
Now I don’t need to call
him any more and we get stuff done by e-mail, he's done a great job of everything and the when things did slow down, it wasn't really his fault.
04 Focus on effective communication with your Russian developer
Whether you're speaking English or Russian, most likely, e-mail will
be the main form of communication, this is fine, although can be hard to
describe accurately the things you want.
If you don’t know how,
learn how to use print screen and some
basic Photoshop to make a little mock-up of what you want, this way, your
developer knows what you are getting at.
If you're totally not technical, get at least a little bit technical, so you at least kow what you're talking about.
But, don't blast your programmer with endless e-mail.
I keep an ongoing Evernote list of things to add, change or modify. Sometimes I’d spend an hour
crafting a monster 15-point e-mail with screen prints and everything.
But he’d only change like
4 things and forget about the rest, so I’d have to resend things which can get a bit confusing.
Here's a screen shot of my part of the ongoing list. Crossing things off is super satisfying
To keep things simple, I send him three things
at a time and nobody gets overloaded.
05 Watch the cost
Creating a website really doesn't have to be expensive, it all depends on your needs.
I know one web businessman who got literally millions in investment money for, basically, a paid subscription dating website. On the other end of the spectrum, Reddit was started on $500.
The basic build of my site cost 45,000 roubles. So far, in total, excluding advertising, I've probably spent about 120,000 on it, maybe more. I could easily spend another 50-100 thousand on it, just expanding the comparison tool.
I've made other decent,
simple function sites on various CMSs and they've cost around 2500 roubles.
Shop around and if you
have a friend familiar with programming, ask him/her what would be a ballpark
figure.
If you are reasonably serious
about what you want to do, don’t go mad on cutting costs. You can get a lot
of stuff for free online (torrent download Photoshop, cough cough) but
sometimes you’ll want to pay decent money for a decent job.
A lot of people think
differently about websites than other products, they have the ‘build it and
they will come mindset’. Well, yeah, doesn't work.
You have to SEO optimize
but you also have to give your site a little PR love.
The best way to start is
FB and Vkontakte.
Running campaigns is a
piece of cake and quite effective. Keep your groups interesting and engaging
and don’t just spam things from your site. Now if only things were so easy on VK!
BONUS: Chaos advertising on VK
My attempts and advertising
on VK pretty much highlight Russia’s love for bureaucracy. What took 15 minutes
on Facebook, has taken close to two weeks on VK and I'm still failing HARD!
First off, my add campaign
was getting rejected because VK thought I was selling GM products and there’s
some law on advertising that shit.
So I contacted support there
and explained that I don’t physically sell anything.
But, because my site contains links to sites where people can buy these kind of things, I had to delete all the links to my site in the
group.
I correct that error and
then get a new one about grammar. That’s right, grammar. I couldn't understand
what was wrong so I began the tech support dance again.
Problem? I had misspelled тогда (тгда). So, I correct
that, resubmit and wait 5 hours for approval.
Next e-mail, rejected
again, this time a grammar mistake involving capital letters. So I go through
the same process once again - confusion, tech support and waiting. Problem? The second
sentence starting with Тогда wasn't capitalized! (why not just point both the misspelling and lack of capitalisation in one go?)
Keep in mind this is all
time wasted when VK could instead be making advertising money of me, a
potential customer.
Each time this happens, I have
to wait ages for support then ages for the campaign to be rejected. The difference
between FB and VK is like the earth and sky.
My newest error is a different one. I'm told I need to provide certificates for selling supplements (remember, I don’t sell them!) and that if I have adverts or links to places, then I need certificates from them, for literally thousands of products. As you can imagine, that's basically impossible to do.
My newest error is a different one. I'm told I need to provide certificates for selling supplements (remember, I don’t sell them!) and that if I have adverts or links to places, then I need certificates from them, for literally thousands of products. As you can imagine, that's basically impossible to do.
When you live here for a few years, you start to understand how
Russians are so good at finding ways around things. For so many years, they've had bullshit, bureaucratic, unintuitive systems forced on them and the only way
to get on, was to find a way around the system.
So that’s what I'm doing
now. I'm renaming the groups, getting rid of the direct links. I’ll grow it
under a different brand until I have a decent number, then I’ll re-brand again.
This daily back and forth
on VK brings an memory to mind.
When I was a small kid,
about age 4, I saw a Saturday morning program on TV about reproduction. At some
point, the program started talking about how sensitive the male genitalia were
(bear with me).
For some weird reason, as soon as I heard this, the first thing I did was charge up the stairs at full speed, run into my parents’ bedroom, launch myself into the air and flying punch my dad square in the nuts.
For some weird reason, as soon as I heard this, the first thing I did was charge up the stairs at full speed, run into my parents’ bedroom, launch myself into the air and flying punch my dad square in the nuts.
I have no idea why I decided
to do this and I don’t remember what happened next (although my dad remembers
the ballshot vividly to this day).
Cutting to the present day, for me, going on VK
and sorting this shit out is just like getting one of those flying ball shots,
day in, day out. I could have doubled or maybe tripled my traffic by now if not
for beloved VK.
FOLLOW UP
As it turns out, I wasn't able to place my ad because a person needs certification to advertise and sell supplements in Russia. Ok, great. Of course, I don't sell anything and thus can in no way get a certificate. If that isn't some retard level logic, I really don't know what is.
What do the haters have to say about that one, egh? I can't advertise my site until I provide a certificate for something which I don't have. Super solid logic.
FOLLOW UP
As it turns out, I wasn't able to place my ad because a person needs certification to advertise and sell supplements in Russia. Ok, great. Of course, I don't sell anything and thus can in no way get a certificate. If that isn't some retard level logic, I really don't know what is.
What do the haters have to say about that one, egh? I can't advertise my site until I provide a certificate for something which I don't have. Super solid logic.
In conclusion
Apart from the VK fiasco,
things have been pretty smooth, never expect things to go completely according to plan.
If you lift weights, speak
Russian and like articles on health and fitness and getting a good supplement
deal, head over to Zdrav-Sila and throw some love my way on FB.
Also, if you are launching a site in Russia, you might want to get help with localising the content into Russian, for help with this, check out the Russian translation services by PoliLingua
Also, if you are launching a site in Russia, you might want to get help with localising the content into Russian, for help with this, check out the Russian translation services by PoliLingua






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